


Liberosis

by Amraklove



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, F/M, Finished, Hurt/Comfort, I'm sorry for making you cry though, Pain, Sad, you shall cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2018-12-06 16:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11604630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amraklove/pseuds/Amraklove
Summary: She looked at Sasuke. He was trying to grasp his chopsticks correctly, but the same odd twist was adorning his fingers. Sasuke's body was falling to the ground when she began to decode the mystery. / Post-War. 699-700 setting.





	1. Part One

It was a long time before she realized it. And when she did, it was too late.

.

His eyes ran wildly, in all directions, while his feet slid across the plain field. Shuriken kept flying at his sides, dangerously close to his body. Fingers touching the soft grass—full of water and insects and nature—he stood up abruptly. There was no time for his muscles to relax, though, for her eyes met his and his gaze hardened. He tensed up again.

Her stance was simple; her feet slightly apart and her arms at her sides, fists raised. He, in turn, was standing up straight; not a sign of a threat and not a scent of danger.

Nevertheless, it was safe to say that he was being cautious. He knew that with just the wrong footing he would be a pile of dead meat from her perfect chakra control. Yet he stood in all his unabashed glory, amidst a million rays of light, and all she wanted to do was gape—or scoff, but this was Sasuke and she knew he had always been extremely arrogant in his own way. Yet there she stood too, fists ready to attack and feet ready to jump in the air.

Not a single sound was heard across the field, but the beating of two drumming hearts and the sounds of birds waking up in the morning.

She didn't dare notice the sun had come up a long time ago—after all, they'd been training for hours, ever before the sun came up in the east.

Perspiring, tired, and drained, she dashed forward. His eyes followed her every movement.

Kunai clashed with Chokutō and the nth battle began. In spite of his weapon holding the bigger physical size, Sakura's strength served to be greater than his sword; the force of her hold proved to be a sudden blast of power and he stepped away in a swift movement, landing on a nearby tree branch to watch his opponent carefully after almost tumbling to the floor not even five minutes into this new match of sparring. His eyes turned a scarlet red, and he watched and observed and took notice of the simplest things and the more complex: Sakura's breathing pattern, the speed of her chakra pathways, the gleam in her eyes as she looked at him. She was running on pure adrenaline and determination at the moment.

"Did I drain the energy out of you already, Sasuke-kun?" He stiffened, tensing at the unasked mockery tone in her voice; she was smiling, proud as if. He'd been perched on the branch for quite a few seconds already, though, and so he moved down to the grass and looked at her from across the small clearing, a little scowl present.

Naruto beamed with excitement, loudly exclaiming his bets on Sakura and criticising Sasuke from time to time. Kakashi sighed, probably questioning his decisions for watching the fight between his former students when he had a bunch of paperwork to complete back at the tower, but staying all the same.

Sakura smiled at him, and he moved forward at an incredibly fast speed—she could barely see him coming, and one look into his eyes while dodging the attack told her that he wasn't using his Sharingan, contrary to when he was observing her from the tree branch. Using it would have been unfair to her in any case.

His fist came close to her face before she dodged it; the inertia of his sudden movement meeting no target bringing him right next to her.

Thinking he might keep moving forward, drift apart and jump away before the next attack, she quickly prepared herself to counterattack by the rear and appear behind him. She thought about taking a step to the left, rounding on him and appearing right behind him.

But he didn't move away after his attempt to punch her.

Her eyes widened as his body turned to her instead, still very close, and moved his sword along her forearm; she managed to dodge, barely suppressing the little blood that came out from beneath her short sleeve at the small cut. Her eyes narrowed.

Expecting the next attack this time, she wasn't surprised when his body turned around her persona again to swing his weapon at her with a twist of his sole right hand, a swing so expert in its essence that she barely has to repress her astonishment. She evaded the blade by putting her own kunai against the sharpness of it, well polished and taken care of by its owner—knowing him, on a daily basis.

And then they dropped their weapons simultaneously, no words needed in order to understand.

The next hour or two was a battle of arms and legs and muscles and hands and strength, and Sakura didn't register how much time it had passed before she actually could relax and find oxygen for her heaving lungs. Her breathing was harsh and forced out of her body and inside back again with very little time to waste. It was only three seconds—three short seconds of them being apart and not fighting hand-to-hand without a parting, for the first time after an hour, or two, or three—and she had to gasp when her legs gave out and were suspended in the air without a notice. The rough bark of a tree met her back in a hiss.

She didn't understand first, midly dazzled and taken aback, but then she focused her eyes beyond Sasuke. Her brain grasped the situation as soon as she glanced at Kakashi and he had the same expression as on that day—that day during the war, that day that marked her and marked him and marked Team Seven, only that it was mostly her that got marked.

She knew she should fight back; after all, this was a sparring session and she'd been sure she was going to win. But then again this seemed oddly familiar and she couldn't understand why she felt so helpless.

As soon as she looked back at Sasuke's own piercing, unforgiving eyes, her mind screamed at her in ways that were not coherent at all. She kicked, and she almost thrashed in a panicked state because suddenly she couldn't breathe and what was he thinking? She looked into his eyes and saw the chirping of a cry of a hundred, million, billion birds in his hands like a morbid, old picture in her brain. The same hands that once held blood and crushed bones.

Only that he only had one hand left now, and he was using it to wrap around the flesh of her neck against the broad bark of an old tree. Only that her mind had been playing tricks on her and there was no chirping at all. Only that her feet were no longer hanging but instead on solid ground (when had he let go, anyway?).

She coughed, one time or ten, she couldn't really think or process.

The buzzing in her ears increased tenfold and she gasped for air like a fool—she couldn't really help it, there was no air.

She numbly felt Kakashi at her side, awkwardly trying to help her breathe with a few, soft pats on the back. She numbly heard Naruto yelling obscenities in the background toward his friend, like a lunatic. What she did feel was the guilt in her gut when she raised her head to look at the scene: Naruto yelling, Sasuke retreating like a scared animal, and his eyes falling over hers for a brief moment, the emotions in them consuming them both before he was out of sight.

.

Sakura didn't see Sasuke for a long time. Her nights became longer and her days became shorter with work to keep her busy but with thoughts at night to keep her awake for long hours.

It took her only a week to know he had left to another country, continuing his journey around the world. Naruto had told her—as soon as she arrived at his front door demanding answers—that he'd left without much of a notice but a short letter saying that he had to leave for a few weeks.

Weeks turned into months and months turned into a number: seven.

By the time he returned to the village, it was winter. Naruto had married in the early summer and the celebration had been big and incredibly spectacular; she was happy for Hinata and for her best friend, who had been living together since. By the time he returned to the village, they were twenty.

She greeted him a day after, no remorse and no mention of the last incident; just pleasantries and small talk. Sakura spent the rest of the day with him.

If he ever wanted to say sorry, he never took the chance.

.

They were walking in plain November, like many other nights after the war ended.

Sakura was with her hands in the pockets of her comfy, dark pink jacket after a long shift at the hospital; Sasuke opted for hiding his sole arm in the warm confines of his dark cloak, face partly covered by, to the extent of which they could be, tidy bangs.

The streets were quiet, as there was no one—but them—around to disturb the peace. It was a peace both of them craved every night, after the war and all the blood and the yelling of passed persons—it was a peace they both deserved.

Silent, with their lips clamped shut, the only sound heard was the one coming from their measured steps. Ninja steps, as low and stealthy as they already were, resonated against the walls of near houses around them.

When they reached her apartment, she smiled, and he nodded once. And the silence stretched on for nights.

.

Naruto smacked his best friend before she could say anything in the raven-haired man's defence. So she closed her mouth again and observed the, primarily, amusing show before her.

"Sasuke, you bastard!"

"Idiot."

And all hell broke loose. Naruto tried to land a punch on his face, but Sasuke was too fast, dodging and swinging his leg under the blonde's legs in favour of tripping him, the latter jumping a few meters back and coming right back at him again.

Sakura watched as her patience ran low at each punch and kick, brows close to knitting together when she realized they were only using raw taijutsu. She was this close to intervening—in the end, she would always be the one to heal them, so she might as well stop them before they can harm themselves further.

When she opened her mouth and took a step forward, though, her eyes landed on Sasuke's breathing. Her keen hearing tried to pick up on anything—everything. Shallow. Too shallow.

Sasuke had always been particularly good at keeping his breathing in check; always calm, always controlled, always quiet.

Then she noticed other things amongst Naruto's attempts to punch him, like a domino effect, the signs slowly crumbling in line after her own eyes.

The trembling.

Sasuke's body shook slightly, and then more visibly as the seconds passed; she could see the changes with clarity under the shade of a nearby tree. Naruto got too close; his hand raised in the air. Sakura's eyes widened.

Naruto's fist collided with his friend's cheek, and Sasuke stumbled to the floor with no difficulty.

"Sasuke-kun!" She would smack Naruto senseless later, she decided, rushing to Sasuke's side and placing a hand on his back. His body was facing down on the dried up dirt of one of the many training grounds—Naruto had taken Sakura with him to Sasuke's apartment no more than thirty minutes ago, demanding his best friend to spar with him or else, for which Sakura had laughed inside.

Sasuke coughed once, twice, thrice. Her heart skipped a beat.

"What the hell, Sasuke!" Naruto stomped a foot on the ground, childishly crossing his arms at Sasuke's form still not moving off the ground. Sasuke stilled. "Get up! I'm still not done with you for missing my wedding!"

As soon as Sasuke made a move to stand and decided to stop halfway through with knees on the ground, Sakura felt for his temperature, and, finding it normal for the circumstances of battle, she frowned even more in concern. Maybe it's his stomach, maybe it hurts. But, as she searched through his body with her soothing chakra, she found nothing out of the ordinary. She bit her lip, and gasped as his back shook with the effort of standing.

She stood up just as his back was straight and he was raised to his full height, battling on whether to help or not. He was still wobbly on his feet. But Sasuke just stared at Naruto with an icy glare—and a slightly swollen cheek that Sakura was itching to heal—looked at Sakura for a fleeting moment, turned away and started walking in the opposite direction.

She immediately ran after him, taking no care and placing a hand on his shoulder before gasping at his abrupt movement. He turned around to face her, and she had to take a second to recompose herself. "Sasuke-kun, let me fix that," she lifted her hand and placed it on his cheek. Sasuke was looking at her with a blank face, the same trademark, usual face he always wore since she can remember.

One moment she flickered her healing chakra on his cheek, and the other he forced her hand down with his—forced, she supposes, was not really true, as there was a certain gentleness, a certain patience in his act. "Sakura."

He looked at her and no words were needed. Sakura could see it in his stubborn eyes; she could almost hear the I'm fine in the air around them.

Sasuke let go of her wrist and turned, once again, away to continue walking.

Sakura didn't have time to react until the next day.

Naruto fumed with anger, moving his hands in the air from side to side even though Sasuke couldn't see him. "Sasuke, you bastard! Come back here!"

Sasuke did never go back to the training grounds; Sakura stared at his back with worry, completely unaware of the unexpected.

.

She awoke to the sound of tranquil villagers on the streets and dark bags under her eyes. With a tired yawn, she sat on her bed and scratched her head—her hair was growing a little past her shoulders already and she needed to cut it immediately, or else she would have to wake up to messy tangles every morning, and she did not want that anymore. After her genin years, Sakura knew that long hair didn't suit her that much, rather it was partly boring and partly a waste of her time and hair products.

With a threading of her fingers through the soft, pink maze she wore on her head, she was greeted with no nodes or bumps interrupting the journey—from the roots until she reached the tips.

She got out of bed.

The lingering light filtering through the window's curtains left the room in a soft hue of warm colors, ones that made her still for a moment to admire the beauty of the place. It was a picture taken from the most sophisticated of cameras, she was sure that could fit the description perfectly.

When she got out of the bathroom and finished dressing in her work clothes, Sakura checked on the time. She still had two hours left before starting her shift at the hospital. Maybe even, if she was sneaky enough, she could start an hour before at most, but that still left her an hour to spare.

With a sigh, she approached the fridge of her apartment, almost groaning when all she could find was a jar full of water and a bottle of sake to the side—courtesy of Tsunade herself. She closed the fridge.

Glancing at her keys, she tucked them in her brown coat, as well as her purse, and left the apartment. She hadn't eaten breakfast yet.

.

It was a surprise when, in the middle of placing the fresh fruit in the numerous bags that she held, she saw a very familiar black fabric in the corner of her peripheral vision.

She woke up this morning with a yawn, and she would've never thought, in a thousand years, that she would end up an hour later encountering Sasuke while shopping for food. The fact that he was looking at all the kinds of tomatoes next to her didn't make the stupor written on her face any easier to hide. She quickly bid her gratitude to the vendor and took a few steps toward him. Not too close, but close enough to hear him above all the people's noises. The flea market was overstocked on a casual Saturday morning, as usual. It wasn't usually filled with so many people during winter, but the weather was rather cozy that morning.

"Sasuke-kun." At the sound of her unexpected voice, she couldn't help but notice how he visibly flinched.

"Sakura," he acknowledged. Then, he turned away and kept on inspecting the vegetables on the stand in front of him. "I didn't expect to find you here so early. Have you put your hands on anything yet?"

There were no signs on his face that would give away that he knew of her slip of words.

When she realised her mistake, she quickly stammered. "Oh! I mean, I meant hand, not hands. How crazy of me, to forget things so easily, I clearly didn't realise that you still don't–"

"Tomatoes."

"Uh?"

He lifted his sole arm to reveal a bag full of what appeared to be the sinful red comestible. Sakura smiled a little. "Oh, of course," she sighed, clutching onto her several bags harder.

As she looked from the bag up at him, she found that his dark eyes were already set on hers, making her avert her gaze rather quickly.

She looked at the stand in front of them and looked back at Sasuke with a curious face, pointing at the green vegetables he'd been looking at a while ago with her hand. "You like spinach?"

The face he gave her didn't answer her question. It was plain and stoic, and she wanted to dig deeply into his soul just to see all of his emotions pour out on her at once—because as it went, she never knew what he was feeling.

She noticed Sasuke leaving the bag at his feet to pick out the spinach he wanted, a small frown on his face and the early sun beaming softly on their backs. She bent slightly to pick up his bag full of tomatoes and, by the time she straightened out again to look at what he was doing, he was already paying for the spinach. For a moment, she thought his only hand was shaking, but the illusion was gone as soon as she blinked once.

He grabbed the new bag of spinach from the old vendor standing behind the stand and she strained her eyes in order to look with better clarity and definition. Sasuke was pulling the bag from where the vendor was giving it with incredible force, as if it caused him a tremendous amount of effort to lift the brown bag in the first place.

Sakura almost gasped, but held the urge inside when Sasuke looked at her with something she dared to think was a glare. She couldn't react in time.

"I do like spinach. I don't only like tomatoes, Sakura."

She almost blushed, embarrassed.

"It's the only vegetable I've seen you eat, though."

Something flashed across his eyes, and he gave her an amused click of his tongue. "Tomatoes are vegetables, Sakura."

"Actually, they are fruits. They contain seeds, you see."

Sasuke shifted his weight from one leg to the other, also shifting his eyes to the villagers buying more food at other stands, before meeting her eyes again.

And with that, she smiled at him, still in front of the stand at the flea market, and tried not to think about the effort it took him to lift a plain, weightless bag of spinach. She didn't even try to look at his hand now, with fear of what she would see.

Sasuke was standing there, looking at her as if he was expecting something to happen. It took her a moment to take notice that she was still holding his other bag full of tomatoes. With a gasp, she gave him the paper bag with a little hurry. And tried to cut the meeting short.

"Well, I need to get to the hospital soon, so I'll leave you to the hunt." Laughing at her own excuse of a joke without a hint of honesty, she rushed out of the crowded streets full of different food and people, with her own bags in hand, and she only stopped when she could finally breathe again.

.

"Sakura-chan!"

It happened again sooner than she had expected, exactly two days later—not that she was expecting it to happen again, anyway.

She had had a long shift at the hospital and was incredibly tired when Naruto barged into her office with an annoyed Sasuke trailing behind. It was almost nine and the streets were devoid of people, except for the random young couples on dates under the moonlight. Inside the hospital there had been barely any sounds, today had been a rather quiet day for all the doctors; although Sakura had had to fill many stacks of paperwork anyway. She had looked around and decided that she had filled enough for one day, though.

Naruto had planted his hands on her desk as if he owned it, looking at her with a gleam in his clear blue eyes.

"Let's go, come on! You've been here since you woke up!"

She had looked at him with a little smile present. "Go where Naruto?"

He had snorted. "Ichiraku's, where else?"

Sakura had squinted her eyes up at him, looking past him and noticing only Sasuke in the room with them. "Where's your wife, you moron? Don't tell me you just left her at home."

Naruto's face drains of any color before the skin comes back to life in an angry red. "Hey! I wouldn't do that to Hinata, Sakura-chan!" He exclaims, not meeting her amused eyes and crossing his arms over his chest. "Plus, she's at Hanabi's. Told me it was an important clan meeting."

So now she was, indeed, at Ichiraku's with her two boys, sitting on the far right; Naruto was in the middle, and Sasuke was on the left.

They ordered what they wanted to eat with a familiarity that reminded her of when they were mere kids coming back from their first missions. They made small talk until the food was given to them, right in front of them, and they started eating after Naruto slurped down his first bowl of ramen with hungry eyes.

And Sakura noticed. And it happened again.

While Naruto was busy talking to Teuchi, she leant forward in her seat to ask something to Naruto, which completely left her mind when she noticed Sasuke. The image left her wide-eyed and gaping.

He was trying to grasp his chopsticks correctly, but the same odd twist was adorning his fingers. His face was scrunched up in concentration, disbelieve and frustration marking his features as he tried to open the chopsticks to start eating. But, try as he might, he just couldn't do so much as split them. They eventually fell to the counter with a loud sound.

Naruto turned from his conversation with Teuchi and regarded him for two seconds, before smacking Sasuke in the back playfully. "What's wrong, bastard? Can't even hold your chopsticks?"

Sakura knew it was meant to be taken as a joke. She knew he was messing around. Sasuke should have smacked Naruto back and called him by a stupid name and they would have gone on with their lives.

But that didn't happen.

Sasuke suddenly put a few bills on the counter, got off his seat slowly, and left with heavy steps.

Naruto started yelling after his brooding figure disappearing into the darkness of the streets, and Sakura started berating Naruto and getting him to forget about it and to keep eating in peace.

And this time she didn't erase the memory of what she had seen; the image of his struggle for something so simple was left imprinted in her brain.

.

She had been given a mission to retrieve a scroll from the Land of Waves with Sai as her escort—not that she needed an escort, but it was a B-ranked mission, and she didn't mind Sai's company anyway.

She returned a week later, as scheduled, for there hadn't been any altercations during their mission. She went to the Hokage tower, delivered the scroll and her report, as well as Sai's, and left to her house for a quick shower.

It was a surprise when, as soon as she got to her apartment door, a certain raven-haired man was waiting for her. Well, she didn't know about that, but he had been leaning against her door. Her door, no one else's.

So she went up the stairs leading straight to her door, not bothering to jump from the ground. After the mission, she didn't trust her levels of chakra that much; after all, she had barely eaten and/or slept, too focused on getting and bringing the important scroll safely.

Sasuke looked at her and straightened up, shoving his only hand in the confines of the pocket of his trousers—and Sakura had to frown at that because she had an idea about what that might be about. The image of his deformed fingers played out in her mind before she pushed that away and reached him.

"Hello, Sasuke-kun," she said, grabbing her travel bag a little tighter. "How long have you been waiting here? I just came back."

"I know," he muttered.

Something snapped in Sakura, and she worked fast to unlock the door to her apartment in order to hide her blush. The fact that the love of her life had heard of her arrival, gone to her apartment, and waited for her for x amount of minutes made her blush increase tenfold.

"Right, well, I'm gonna shower, do you mind?" She said, closing the door behind them and taking steps toward her bathroom, inside her room.

Sasuke only shook his head, standing in the middle of the living room. Sakura looked at him when she knew her face was at a normal temperature again.

"Okay. When I'm done, I'll cook us something."

"I can cook while you take a shower."

Sakura nodded, smiled, and left to the bathroom.

That evening, when they were both sitting in front of each other and the food was being devoured, Sakura subtly looked for anomalies in him.

Sasuke was as normal as he could ever be throughout the whole thing.

.

Sakura wanted to check something. She wanted to check Sasuke, course her chakra into his system in order to see what the problem was. She wanted to believe she was wrong and that he was as healthy as usual, but she knew she shouldn't fool herself.

First, during training. Next, at the market. Then, at Ichiraku's Ramen Shop.

She wanted to see for herself with her expert healing hands.

And so she called for him. She sent the Jonin she had previously been giving a physical to toward Sasuke's small apartment, with the clear message of going to the hospital and looking for her.

She stood in the centre of one of the rooms designed for conducting routine physicals and check-ups. She stood there for barely ten minutes before she felt Sasuke's signature chakra walking down the hallway right outside the room.

The man opened the door silently, so as to not alert her, even though she was facing the door and saw him as soon as he stepped inside.

"Sasuke-kun," she breathed, clasping her hands together in front of her chest, smiling up at him. "Good morning!"

Sasuke nodded once, muttering her name under his breath and closing the door behind him. He cleared his throat.

"What did you need me for?"

Sakura's face flushed with a light pink hue against her wishes, thinking over his words and inwardly cursing herself for her imaginative mindset. Sasuke didn't see the tone of her face, or he didn't care, for he remained put in front of the closed door of the room, looking at her behind long bangs that hid the lilac of one eye.

She cleared her throat and picked up a folder from a nearby table.

"I was giving Naruto his physical the other day when I realised I couldn't remember when you last had one. You must be well aware that they're done once every three to four months, as per every Shinobi requires one so often." She took at deep breath against the intensity of Sasuke's stare. "You haven't had one since the war. And, despite what you may think, you aren't immortal. So, you can sit on the bed now, please."

She scribbled a few words and characteristics on the chart, jotting down Sasuke's basic features on the new paper.

When she looked up, she was expecting to see him sitting on the hospital bed. Instead, he was still rooted to the floor by the door.

"Sasuke-kun," she said, almost chastising him for his stubbornness.

"I don't need a physical, Sakura," he spits back, a seething tone that made her seeth back.

"Yes, you do. Now, you can sit on your own, or I can make you. And trust me, you do not want the entire hospital to hear about your stubbornness," she finished, watching with a glint from her eyes how he abided and sat down.

The physical goes well.

Despite Sakura's previous worries, Sasuke doesn't have anything wrong with him. There's nothing wrong with his flow of chakra, or his chakra altogether, or his system. There's nothing wrong with his physique, either. His eyes seem in perfect condition too.

"Seems like you're good to go, as expected," she whispered from their close proximity, looking up at him and letting her hands stop glowing. She thought, as she took a few steps back, she saw the narrowing of his mistrustful eyes, as if he knew that she thought something had been up with him. Hence the timely physical.

"There's no need to call me in four months again, then," he said.

Sakura huffed against the chart in her hands.

"Routine physicals are called that for a reason, Sasuke-kun," and with a sigh, she turned around. "You can leave now, thank you for coming."

Sakura was already taking her gloves off when she heard Sasuke putting his shirt back on.

And then she heard the laboured breathing coming from the white bed.

She turned to him after repressing the gasp that was prone to come out of her parted, pink lips. She rushed, watching as Sasuke's eyes were unfocused, downcast and void of anything. He was not moving. The only thing she could hear was his pants, his desperate attempt at getting air that wasn't there for him.

She quickly held him by the shoulders, not wasting any more time. She watched as his head snapped to look at her as the cool contact was made, eyes piercing and underlined with fear. Something so tangible that she did gasp this time.

He was fine before; he had been fine up until now. The physical had taken her thirty minutes, long and prolonged. She had known he knew about the prolongation of the check-up. Usually, they were done quickly and professionally. Sakura, instead, had taken way more minutes than required and had poured every emotion into the search.

But she had just been looking for something, some sign that might have led to her suspicions. What she had seen in previous days and weeks was not normal, and it was definitely not part of her imagination. She knew he could tell there had been a change somewhere inside him. She knew too, and that's why she had extended the amount of time inspecting him.

But she had found nothing wrong, absolutely nothing that could hint to an illness of some sorts.

She knew now that she hadn't done the physical as well as she had thought, for Sasuke was still gasping for air before her, looking at her and the floor with something akin to downright panic.

As soon as Sakura moved her chakra into his system once again, Sasuke moved away from her. He moved to the side with weak legs that seemed lifeless to her expert eyes. And, as expected, the sudden movement made him fall to the floor on his bottom, making her eyes widen considerably.

"Sasuke-kun!"

When she sank to her knees next to the suddenly weakened man, she noticed he had broken a sweat. He was hyper ventilating, lifting his hand and looking at it as it twisted slowly to his command, treacherous to his eyes.

She could only guess he was in slight shock after all the things that were transpiring. Sakura watched him with concerned eyes, almost willing for his suffering to go away on her command.

"Stop..." He bit out, fisting his hand as he tried to stand up to no avail.

"Don't move. Hold on," she pushed her chakra inside his body, searching for something else, something she had missed before. Anything.

Whatever she had done before didn't give her the answers the needed.

For a second, she almost gave up; there was literally nothing she could think of that she hadn't checked. She had checked over his digestive system, his bones, his skin, his tongue, his ears, his eyes-

She gasped, pushing her chakra further up his system, something in her eyes hardening. It was determination that which drove her now, now that she knew what she had been missing. It was something that wasn't really checked during normal physicals, and that's why she had overlooked it.

Although, with Sasuke's mysterious illness, Sakura should have known better.

So she pushed and moulded her chakra expertly in order to access the most vulnerable system for a Shinobi of Sasuke's calibre: the nervous system.

Sasuke's body was falling to the floor when she began to decode the mystery. He started spasming a second later, seizure starting.


	2. Chapter 2

.

He woke up the next day in the morning, thirteen hours after falling unconscious.

As soon as he opened his eyes, he stayed looking at a white ceiling, smooth and far away. His eyes focused and unfocused, getting used to the new light coming from a window he can only assume is nearby.

The memory of whatever happened before hit him in parts and pieces, scattered across his brain and played before him like a broken film. He only remembered the excruciating pain in his only hand, and the tingling in the other—or rather, what was left of his other arm. He remembered Sakura's wide green eyes, full of panic and fearful for his wellbeing. He remembered hitting something cold and hard before his world turned black.

And that was about it.

Sasuke coughed, once and then twice, doubling over the bed for a moment and falling on it once again later—after, of course, coughing his lungs out. His chest felt like it was on muddy waters, and currently sinking.

A second after that, the modern door of the disgustingly white room opened and added some pink and some green into the previously monotone landscape.

She was looking at him, taking in his awakened state, clearly not expecting him to be awake. Nevertheless, she smiled as though it was normal and clutched the chart in her hands with refound eagerness, close to her chest.

"I see you're awake, Sasuke-kun," she said, taking steps closer to his bed, to his side.

Sasuke found a bit of strength left to turn his head toward the approaching doctor, seeing as she left the chart on his bedside table and touched his forehead with the back of her hand.

"No fever... No perspiration..." She murmured under her breath, as if saying those things to herself more so than to him. She reached and grabbed his shoulder, pushing him slightly to the side and putting her stethoscope to his back, under the usual hospital gown. He wondered when they had taken off his clothes, or exactly who, but he disregarded the thought as he felt the cold metal on his bare back.

Sakura would never.

After a few seconds of silence, Sakura moved the stethoscope and spoke.

"Breathe in, deeply, and out."

She moved the object to another spot on his back as soon as he finished exhaling. "Again," she said, and so he did.

After three more times, Sakura removed the stethoscope and put it behind her, each side falling to her shoulders. Sasuke lay on his back a second after.

"No signs of trouble with breathing... Heartbeat is stable... Relatively low BP but that's normal considering all your previous data shows it's a regularity for you ever since the academy."

She picked up the chart and updated it, and Sasuke barely heard her ramblings above the sound of someone barging in; someone with blonde, very distinctive and spiky hair, and the bluest eyes he had ever seen.

"Sasuke! You stupid bastard! I thought you had died when Sakura-chan told me the news!"

He walked toward his other side, towering over him and bending over to hug him. When his tan arms enveloped his weakened body, Sasuke recoiled. He heard Sakura giggling behind the palm of her hand at the scene, and so he directed his glare toward her and she immediately composed herself, trying to seem innocent by scribbling down more things on the papers—he doubted she was writing anything at all, though.

"Naruto, I only told you he had fainted. Obviously, he did not die," she sighed, taking her eyes off the chart and looking at Naruto, who was currently letting go of the Uchiha and flopping down on one chair.

"I didn't know that!" The blonde threw his arms over his sides, exclaiming. "You never said he hadn't died after fainting, ya know. It can happen."

Sakura rolled her eyes, and she could almost be certain that Sasuke had done the same thing.

"Alright, well, Sasuke-kun seems stable now, so why don't you go outside until I'm done checking?"

"But Sakura-chan, I just got here!"

"Do you want him to die?" She smiled sweetly down at Naruto, while putting the chart down on the bed, who immediately sprang to his feet and rushed to the door.

"Nope! Bye, I'll come back."

And with that, he left.

Sakura sighed and looked at Sasuke. He looked back at her.

"What happened?" He asked, raspy voice and frown on his face.

She sat on the bed, on the small space next to his hip.

"If I'm honest with you, I don't know yet," she voiced, taking her time in letting the words out. "You suddenly lost control of your muscles, and started convulsing after falling to the floor. I stabilised you and brought you here, and here you are."

Sasuke was looking at the ceiling now, fisting his hand tightly, testing its strength—strength that had failed him the day before.

"I'll check on your chakra later to make sure everything is fine. Also, I would like to take some blood samples." She smiled sweetly down at him, as if knowing what was going on but letting him be in the dark, which was probably not the case anyway; Sasuke stared back at her with the urge to frown. And then she stood and left, just like that.

And with the soft click of the door closing, Sasuke closed his eyes in frustration.

No one knew what happened to him, but Sasuke definitely knew everything was not fine.

.

Tsunade stared back at her, a purse of her painted lips making her look more like her real age—not that Sakura would ever admit that to her.

A bottle of sake was on the desk of the large office, almost empty and telling Sakura the blonde woman hadn't been wasting time.

Sakura knew just how much she had been drinking ever since she stepped down from the Hokage position. She was enjoying her elder years like no one else. Although Sakura was tired of telling the woman to stop drinking, or else her kidneys would fail without repair, she knew there was no point anymore. She wouldn't stop drinking anyway.

Tsunade put her head in her hands, then, thinking the situation throughoutly like the doctor she was.

"You're telling me, Sakura, that Sasuke is critically sick and you don't know the disease yet."

"That's right, Tsunade-sama."

Sakura released a shaky breath after saying those words. It pained her that after all the years studying medicine, she couldn't pinpoint what was wrong with the man she loved, no less.

She knew it was something affecting the nervous system, and she knew it was progressive. It would just get worse with time.

"Repeat the symptoms for me," Tsunade murmured, taking out a pad and a pen, ready to jot down every important message.

Sakura went over everything in her head and sighed.

"What I have seen so far includes shortness of breath, frail muscles, muscle spasms, fatigue," she paused, trying to remember anything else her keen, medical eyes had seen over the course of the last months. "Impaired coordination, and rigidness. That's about all I know so far."

Tsunade was nodding, leaving the pen on the desk and going over every described symptom.

"Sakura, you should get that blood sample," she said, a grim look over her features. Sakura's heart skipped a beat, knowing that look from experience over the years training under her tutelage. She knew.

"What's wrong?"

"I think I know what it is, but I just want to be sure."

.

The next hours were a blur to Sakura. Her schedule was completely full after leaving Tsunade's office and she couldn't go check on Sasuke, not even for a second.

Because of this, she had sent a trusted nurse to go get Sasuke's blood samples. A total of eight small vials were to be filled with his blood.

So now, at midnight, Sakura was due to be on her way home.

She was staring at the results, instead, in front of her at the research lab of the hospital.

There was someone telling her what the results meant, but she already knew the whole deal just by looking at the screen.

She couldn't believe she had missed what it was; she had studied this sometime in her first year as an apprentice, and not anymore after that because of its rarity in the Shinobi world. It was pretty normal in civilians, though.

She knew of this illness—she knew it well now, flashbacks of what she had read in books as a teenager flashing in her mind.

Shortness of breath, muscle weakness, muscle spasms, spasticity, impaired coordination, fatigue.

Everything fit. Everything led to that.

If her brain served her correctly, his vocal cords would be affected next, and he would lose all ability to speak, eventually. His eyes would suffer slightly, but not greatly. Inability to move some parts of his body would be a must. Inability to eat and possible surgery to fix his soon-to-be closed throat would take place too. Drooling, more spasms, weakness... The list kept going on and on inside her head.

That night, while she lay on her bed after a long day at work, she cried.

.

Hearing the information felt like someone was ripping her apart. She would rather have endured twenty-four hours of interrogation and torture than hearing Sasuke was probably going to die from something he had no say in.

Disgesting and understanding Sasuke's condition felt like someone had robbed her of everything in her life in the matter of one day. She felt empty. Without hope, there was nothing. No cure equalled no hope.

Telling Sasuke was the hardest part.

She had been tending to patients ever since the morning, running here and there and into every room. She was avoiding having to tell him about what was happening. She almost wished Tsunade could do it for her.

But she knew that, were Sasuke to go berserk and destroy the entire hospital after hearing the news, she would be the only one to stop him. Naruto and Sakura would be the only ones to avoid such thing to happen.

She was now standing in front of his door, hand on the handle and breath coming out in puffs. There was a thin layer of sweat on her forehead from the nervousness. Her stomach was in knots, and she felt that she was going to throw up.

If she didn't go in now, she was sure she was going to empty her breakfast on the door.

She turned the handle, and so she stepped inside.

.

Sasuke stood on his balcony railing.

The shaky words from a week ago still rang in his ears.

Sasuke looked at his hand, fisted it, relaxed it, and tried to ignore the news. The breeze on his face felt too good to be true, and the sunset was staring at him from the horizon.

He moved his toes, finding it easy. He jumped down from the railing and felt the motion as something normal.

It was something so simple and small, jumping from a certain height, that he had done for years as a Shinobi.

It was hard to take in the fact that all of it would be gone in the matter of weeks.

He unwillingly recalled the events back on the hospital bed, and hearing how his whole life was changing for the worse without his approval.

"What are you saying, Sakura?" He had whispered, raspy voice making its way out against the turmoil inside him.

"It's a... It's called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. I had a patient once who had it years ago, although he had been a civilian. It progresses relatively fast, as it will in your case. It attacks the brain and the central nervous system, destroying motor neurons in the brain, which usually send signals to tell the body what to do."

"It can't be. It must be something else."

Sakura had shook her head at his stern voice, pink bangs hiding her watery eyes as she looked down.

"I'm sorry, Sasuke-kun... But the blood tests came back negative for all other diseases, and you do have all the signs."

Sasuke had looked at her as if she couldn't do her job right, even though he knew that he was lying to himself and that she was the only medic he could ever trust completely. He had felt an inexplicable source of anger inside him all the more. His Sharingan had threatened to come alive more than once.

"Is there..." He had swallowed, finding it hard to get out the next words. "Is there a cure?"

He could still see Sakura's head snap up to look at him, hair wild and eyes wilder. There had been tears streaming down her face like a portrait as she shook her face again, ending whatever hope was left in the room.

"No, there's no known cure, just a lot of physical therapy and medicine for the spasms and the trouble breathing."

Sasuke had looked away immediately. Everything else had been white noise amidst the red he had been seeing everywhere.

"You will lose the ability to move at all. Eventually, a tracheotomy would have to be performed to ensure you can swallow and eat. With this surgery, though, your ability to speak would be forever compromised," Sakura had said, repressing her sobs. Sasuke's heart had twisted in a horrible way.

There had been silence from then on.

Sakura had approached him, then, and she had found his hand beneath the sheets. She had given him a squeeze, intertwining their hands together.

"Not all people die from this, Sasuke-kun," she had whispered in a broken mess.

When she'd looked at his eyes, she completely lost it. She had thrown her arms around him and cried on his shoulder, feeling as his only arm moved to rest on the small of her shaking back.

The look he had given her tore her apart. It had been something they both heard in the room, even though he had never voiced it.

As he enters his apartment, now, he still hears the words in the ambience.

If he couldn't be a Shinobi, or move, or do anything at all, what difference did it make that he was alive?

.

The first time Sakura visited Sasuke's apartment for a scheduled check-up, it was two weeks from his given diagnostic.

She knocked on his door and watched as he opened slowly, a little over a second after she had knocked. He had been expecting her.

She entered and closed the door behind her. "Good morning, Sasuke-kun. Sorry I couldn't come sooner, but ten ANBU came last week and I was their only doctor, so you can guess how busy I've been."

She took off her shoes and left them at the entrance, next to his own. She took off her medic bag and left it on his sofa, and then she looked at him as if he was her only sun—he was.

"I could always send someone else if I can't make it to one of the weekly meetings."

Sasuke shook his head, three steps away from her.

"That won't be necessary, I know how busy you are."

Sakura nodded and he motioned her to sit on the couch.

"Ready?" She breathed, slightly nervous about finding out how much progress the disease had made.

"I would... Like to ask you some questions first," he stated, taking her by surprise.

"Of course, Sasuke-kun," she said, turning her body so that she was facing him on the small sofa. She crossed her legs, patiently waiting, knees almost touching his side.

He wasn't turned to face her, but was rather looking at the floor, thinking his questions through.

"It's clearly not hereditary. No one in the Uchiha clan has ever had that. But then... Why?"

Sakura sighed, expecting this question.

"Not a lot of cases have been recorded, so no one knows the cause yet. Mostly, the cases are sporadic, like yours," she explained, looking at his profile in the gentle light filtering through the window. "It affects men more often, too."

"I see," he sighed. "Does it affect my vision?"

She knew the underlined words: would it affect his kekkei genkai?

"Your Sharingan and the Rinnegan should be fine. Maybe you'll see blurry from time to time, but your eyes shouldn't be a problem," she finished, releasing the breath she'd been holding. She had the urge to smile at the tension leaving his shoulders, but they tensed up again a moment later.

"I read... Once about autoimmune diseases. Is this..."

"Unlike other diseases, it doesn't affect the autoimmune system, only the motor neurons. So you will still be able to have involuntary movements."

There was silence after that, and she could almost see the wheels turning in his brain. She almost gasped when she realised what he was thinking of.

"So I can still have children," he states, finally looking at her from his long bangs. The words made her lips purse and she was sure she was frowning.

"Yes, technically, your reproductive system will still work," with a lump in her throat and her cheeks warm, she continued. "There is the risk that the children will get the same disease, though it is small."

When her words left her mouth, he looked away from her and sighed, slowly shaking his head from side to side.

"I don't think I would take that risk..."

It was a whisper, but it was all it took for Sakura's eyes to finally water. She wiped the tears away with the back of her hands, hoping he hadn't noticed, and reached over to touch his forearm.

"Let's start, alright?"

A simple nod was all she got before she started inspecting his condition.

.

Naruto took the news worse than she had.

He had been on a mission for three weeks, and didn't know his best friend had been diagnosed two weeks ago.

She couldn't feel that it wasn't her fault when she got to Sasuke's apartment on the second week of his treatment to find everything in chaos.

His door was ajar, only by a tiny fraction, and she could see the handle had been almost completely melted.

She entered the living room with a creak, taking her shoes off and walking the expanse of the room. There were no sounds, just the small breeze coming from one window at the kitchen.

"Sasuke-kun?" She voiced, walking past the shards of glass all over the floor. The coffee table was turned upside down, thrown all across the living room. The couch was slightly moved and a few flowers from a broken vase lay on the floor.

Her instincts kicked in as soon as she heard a groan from Sasuke's room.

She ran.

When she opened the door to the room, she bumped into a broad chest.

Sasuke was standing close to the door, as if he had been trying to grab it. His face was close to hers, contorted in pain and ultimately suffering. Sakura quickly slid a hand around Sasuke's shoulders, helping him reach his bed.

His laboured breathing preoccupied her greatly.

.

As soon as she had stabilised him in the small bed of his small room, she had stood up and looked down on him like a mother to a child.

"What happened?" She inquired, serious, folding her arms across her chest.

Sasuke looked at her before he closed his eyes and released a breath from his nostrils.

"Naruto happened," was all he said. He dragged the words out as if they hurt. Sakura felt a pang of guilt in her chest at that, because they probably did.

"Sorry, if I had known he was back, I would have told him."

Despite her attempt at helping the situation, Sasuke showed no signs of hearing her. He was quiet for a long time, only focusing on his breathing.

Eventually, he spoke, albeit in a hushed voice that she strained to hear.

"Naruto, he... He came in and started looking for ramen," he started, arm drapped over his closed eyes. "I stood up quickly from the kitchen chair and, as I was walking to him, my legs started feeling numb."

Sakura listened intently, already knowing what had happened. Her eyes softened.

"My feet twisted abnormally then. I fell a few feet away from the idiot, and he had the nerve to... To laugh at me. I..." He was frowning, she could tell, even as his arm was covering the top half of his face.

She knew he was straining to get the words out, so she shook her head, deciding to speak up.

"I can just imagine how you two starting fighting after that," she murmured, sighing at the dire situation.

Sasuke didn't answer.

"Let me check everything more thoughroly. After all, that's what I'm here for."

.

Four weeks after the initial diagnosis at the hospital, Sasuke's hand was already so abnormally twisted that he couldn't grab a thing so small as a cup.

Sakura remembered seeing him try to grab his food utensils the day before, when she had shown up at his apartment to prepare him a meal.

They had eaten in silence, especially since Sakura didn't feel like pointing out how he was grabbing his fork with a bit much of strength. There was too much concentration and pressure put upon the utensil as he ate. Some fingers were bent only a bit, and some were bent greatly in odd angles.

Sakura didn't point it out; not because he didn't know about it, but because she knew just how little time he could have left to grab anything at all.

He had eaten, barely looking at her the whole time, and then he had washed the dishes.

Sakura didn't offer to wash them herself exactly for the same reason she didn't point out how he barely could grab his utensils anymore.

.

It clenched her heart. Everyday, she felt more pain inside her being.

It pained her greatly to see Sasuke's progress; or rather, the opposite. It pained her to see him getting worked up and frustrated in front of her at the most mundane tasks—like handing her a glass of water after a healing session, or jumping from roof to roof, tree to tree.

So many things that were taken for granted before were now very much noted.

His disease, in the span of four weeks, had progressed slowly.

She knew the risks of having it, for it could be fatal in the end. But, even in the direst of situations like these, she still had a bit of hope inside her.

Hope, because it was the only thing she had to reach for.

Hope, because hope kept her sanity going each day she had to strain herself from helping him.

Hope, because not everyone died from it, as the little research done showed.

She had hope and she would have it until either of their last breaths, were it now or in sixty years, because that's who Sakura was.

.

On the fifth week, Sasuke and Sakura were sitting in front of each other on the clean floor of Sasuke's living room.

It was their scheduled time of the week.

Sakura had already checked him with her expert chakra, and now she was getting ready to leave. She put a hand to the floor next to her hip in order to push herself up from this position and ultimately walk out the door—she had a shift at the hospital starting soon, after all.

But before she could do so, Sasuke grabbed her wrist with his only hand, earning a curious look from her.

When she looked down at his hand and saw the disymmetry in his fingers' structure, he took the hand off from her wrist as if it burned and hid it in the pocket of his worn-off, dark jacket.

It was almost as if he was ashamed of the change. It made Sakura's heart clench tightly inside her chest as it had done so many times before.

"What is it, Sasuke-kun?" She asked.

Sasuke looked away and put his head down, making his bangs hide most of his expression to her eyes.

"What happened to your patient?" He asked.

It took her a few seconds to process his random question, and even then she didn't know what he was talking about.

"Huh? Which patient?"

She co-directed an entire hospital and directed the psychiatrict ward for the children inside of said hospital, which was one of the largest in the entire Fire Country. So, yeah, she had a lot of patients everyday. It was understandable how she wasn't sure which person he was talking about.

He spoke, though, after a few more heartbeats.

"A few weeks ago, you said you once had a patient with this... Disease," he mutters, taking in a breath before asking the same question. "What happened to him?"

Sakura stared in shock for what seemed like a lifetime. The sound of her rapid heartbeat could almost be heard in the quiet, small room from how loud it was in her ears. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was slightly agape.

Sasuke eventually looked at her when he was sure she wasn't going to answer.

He met her eyes in a clash of coal, violet, and sea-foam green. One set was pained and almost pleading. One set was stunned and scared.

She knew what had happened to that civilian. She remembered it quite well. The memory of sending him to the morgue was still very present inside her head, especially after learning of Sasuke's same illness.

"He..." She started with an intake of breath. She lets it out before continuing, leaving her empty. "He passed away after a year. His symptoms were progressing and everything wrong was developing right, and way too fast."

She was the one looking toward her lap now, hands squeezed tightly and eyes watering with unshed tears.

It surprised her greatly, for she jumped a little, when she felt something warm against her hands on her shaking lap.

Blinking away the tears, she saw his sole hand encasing the backs of her own two hands.

She quickly looked at him with a gasp, finally releasing the tears she had been holding, because his hand was devoid of any anomalities. His fingers weren't bent.

In that moment, right then, they could pretend he was completely fine. His hand was okay, his life was okay, his legs were okay.

She stared into his gentle eyes, feeling her heart break into pieces for this man she could love so much; so much, she could give her live away for him if needed be.

I'm okay, she almost heard him say.

She could only hope he was right.


	3. Chapter 3

.

It was a little over a month after Sasuke's diagnosis, and four days since she had last seen him, vulnerable and with his hand on her own smaller ones.

She looked at Naruto now, sitting across from her on the same comfortable sofa from his and Hinata's house.

Her back was to an armrest and her legs were extended, reaching Naruto's hip. He was in the same position but on the opposite armrest, legs touching her opposite hip and patiently eating a cup of instant ramen, for once.

Sakura had a certain kind of sadness in her green irises at the sight.

Naruto was staring at the coffee table of his pretty living room, lost thoughts getting tangled in his mind as he tried to explain everything.

Hinata, as soon as they had mentioned their dark-haired best friend, had left to the back porch; it was a peaceful evening, after all, and Hinata didn't want to intrude in the life of someone else's teammate.

It was a peaceful evening. Inside Sakura's being, though, she felt turmoil, like a tropical storm beginning to take the form of a hurricane. She knew Naruto felt the same after she had explained everything about his best friend's condition.

She was walking to her apartment from work when she heard Naruto calling her from the other end of the street; he had been taking a stroll with his wife in the afternoon.

Before she knew what was happening, Sakura was sitting with Naruto on a nice, leather sofa, and Naruto had started demanding to know which illness Sasuke had.

She had no choice but to comply. And now, she wanted answers in return.

"So he just... Fell," she muttered, careful to not sound too forward or intrude his line of deep thoughts.

He just turned his head to her slowly and locked eyes with her, so much like her own. Sadness reflected off them in the same way.

"I had no idea, Sakura-chan. I just, you know, was so happy that the mighty Uchiha Sasuke had finally made a clumsy mistake that I started mocking him hard. Like, full on mocking. I couldn't stop laughing," he dropped his chopsticks inside the ramen cup, then, with a small popping sound. His other hand showed white knuckles and rage underneath, and she feared he would spill the cup's contents over his sofa. "I didn't fucking know, Sakura-chan. I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't know. You couldn't possibly have known." Sakura sighs and stares at him, hoping his guilt could just go away. "Not even Kakashi-sensei knows, and he is the Hokage."

A flash crossed his face.

"Who else knows, besides us?" He asked.

"Only Tsunade-sama, since she helped me find what was wrong."

She heard his sharp snort before she saw his crude face expression.

"Everything is wrong."

Sakura looked away from the sad sky blue eyes, preferring to gaze at a bland, beige rug beneath the coffee table.

"What happened next?" She wanted to hear it, but at the same time, she wished she never heard the answer. Sometimes, some things were better left unsaid.

"He stayed on the floor for a pretty long time. And then he got up, just like that, and started walking past me," Naruto spoke, meeting her eyes again. "Of course, I had to be an asshole and call him out on it, and I know now I deserved it when he turned around and hit my jaw with everything he had."

Naruto let out a dry laugh, devoid of any humour, and shook his head.

"It hurt like a motherfucker."

Sakura, like the good doctor that she was, was already looking around the area on his defined jaw. She looked for signs of bruising, even if it was four days ago, because she knew just how hard the two could hit each other if they wanted to.

When her clear eyes couldn't find anything, she understood.

"Hinata did a good job."

She smiled from her spot on the couch, or tried to. But even if it came out forced and fake and was probably very easy to see, Naruto did the same.

"She didn't ask much about it—plus, Kurama helped too. I had a broken jaw, splintered wrist, and a few bruises here and there. Nothing too hard to heal," he said with yet another dry laugh.

She wanted to tell him that the wrist was one of the body parts that was very hard to heal, what with so many tiny bones and complexities, but the curiosity for the rest of the story left her silent.

Sakura just wanted to get to the end of it, but there was a comfortable silence after that. And she let it happen just because she understood.

He spoke.

"I couldn't understand, I just thought he was pissed that I was making fun of him," he let out a puff of breath after that. "I mean, he probably was."

She quietly agreed.

"Anyway, I pushed him without understanding and he swinged at me again and then you can imagine what happened," he said, followed by a few words that made her breath catch in her throat. "A few seconds before he threw the front door on my face, he screamed that he was sick—in between a string of strongly worded curses. When I asked whatever the heck he meant, he had already slammed the door."

Sakura slowly released the breath she had been holding, and fidgeted with her fingers, bringing her knees close to her face for comfort.

"I'm sorry, I should have let you know somehow," she breathed.

Naruto was leaving his cup of ramen to the side when he whipped his head toward her small, cucooned form.

"You couldn't have, I was on a mission," he leaned back and closed his eyes against the breeze coming from the open windows around the living room.

"Still, I can't say I didn't see the meeting coming. It was meant to happen one way or the other," she admits. "I'd just been hoping you wouldn't find out in between punches."

He looked at her, opening his blue, blue eyes kand gazing into her green ones with something aching to despair.

She cracked a smile through a breaking heart.

"I guess that's too much to ask, hm?"

He cracked a smile, too.

"Yeah, I guess."

.

It was the last day of December and Sakura was tired of listening to everyone telling her to go to the festival.

Ino had come out of the flower shop running toward her, as she walked to her apartment, that morning, and she had had a talk with the blonde that eventually turned into a comical argument.

"Sakura! Thank the heavens that I found you,"

"Ino, I haven't seen you in so long! How's everything?"

"Everything's great! Sai has been over my house almost everyday now, can you believe it? And, get this, he kissed me yesterday. He kissed me, not the other way around."

Sakura could only stare at her best friend, mouth agape and eyes wide. "No. Way," she had croaked out.

Ino had nodded her head several times, a smile and a light blush present. Sakura had laughed with her, then.

"Who would have thought, those books actually helped him... Wait, how was it?"

Ino, unlike many other girls around the village, actually smirked and flipped her ponytail in the air as a sign of superiority.

"Why, of course, forehead," she had dragged out. "It was amazing."

Sakura had heard her, but she had been trying to get the image of her pale team member kissing her best friend out of her mind to notice much of what she had been saying.

So, when there was a dainty hand waving in front of her green eyes and rose lips, she'd been taken aback.

"Did you hear me? I said I can't wait to kiss him tonight. Are you coming?"

"Where, pig?"

"To the annual festival, billboard brow. I swear, that forehead of yours is sucking up all the neurons you have left."

A vein had popped in Sakura's mentioned forehead, slightly covered by strands of hair.

"Anyway, no. I can't go."

"What? Why not?" Ino had inched closer to Sakura, shoulder brushing hers and eyebrows wiggling suggestively. "Isn't Sasuke-kun in the village? You could, you know, ask him to accompany you."

If it had been any other day six weeks before, Sakura may have blushed and stammered away, excusing herself before she sprinted to her apartment.

But, at the moment, things were different.

So Sakura had widened her eyes for a second, and she had bit her lower lip at the idea of telling Sasuke to go to a festival with her. With twisting fingers, numbness, spasms, and twisting legs, Sakura was not about to force him out there into the world.

She had shook her head a little at her best friend, right there and then in front of the infamous flower shop, and had excused herself. Ino didn't know. The village didn't know yet, and Sakura was not about to tell them.

.

Tsunade had hinted at it, Kakashi had passively and boredly stated that his date was his friend Gai, and even Shizune had asked her about it.

Tenten had insisted. She had been asking Sakura to go to the festival with her while Sakura had been buying her supplies. She was running low on Shuriken, and her friend's shop had good deals everyday.

"Sakura, why don't you go tonight? Come on, we went last year and it was awesome!"

Sakura remembered it all. She had decided to join Lee and Tenten during the festival last year; they had stopped before at the cemetery, of course, she knew her friends had wanted their teammate to be there with them, even if he never liked said festivities.

Then, she had spent the night laughing and eating dango with them, under the fireworks and loud music coming from nearby drums and flutes. Lee had won her a plushy, and Tenten had beat her at several games of aim—as to be expected from the expert weapons master.

It had been a fun night, especially since she loved festivities and the joy that came with them.

But she couldn't possibly go this year—with Lee and Tenten, and with anyone else for that matter.

So, she had refused with genuine sadness and a well-crafted lie.

"I have a ton of work at the hospital. Most of the workers took their day off today because of the festival, and I volunteered to cover for them," she explained.

It's something she had done before, in the two years after the war, and so she didn't let the guilt seep into her bones for telling her good friend something that was not entirely true, just somewhat.

Today was her free day, in reality. She didn't have to work.

But she was going to take care of someone, anyway, even if that someone was Sasuke and he was not in the hospital. Even if she had checked on him a few days ago, and the next scheduled visit was in a week. Especially since everyone he knew was probably going to the festival, and he wouldn't be visited in the entire day.

Tenten had pouted.

"Really? Wow, you're gonna have so much work today, good luck," she had said, offering a comforting smile, "I'm sorry you couldn't make it."

"Yeah, I'm sorry, too."

"Maybe next year?"

Sakura had nodded, paid for the Shuriken, and left the store after saying goodbye.

She was going to visit Sasuke, even if it was already five in the afternoon.

.

Sasuke opened the door to find his pink-haired teammate on the other side, a beaming smile and small lunchbox present.

Sasuke could do nothing but frown.

"Why are you here?" He didn't mean to sound so direct and hurtful, but he still chastised himself internally when the words left his mouth, anyway. The way she seemed unfazed by his abrasive question only made his jaw tighten.

She was just standing right outside his door, waiting for him to just let her in.

Sometimes, he wondered how they could do it—Naruto and Sakura. How they could weave into his life everyday and make it seem like everything was okay, even after he's yelling at them to go away. Especially now, when his brain had no rest from the cruel reality, he wondered even more.

Sometimes, Sakura surprised him. Sometimes, it looked like his comments didn't affect her at all, as if she was used to them, as if she was expecting something hurtful to come out of his mouth every time he saw her. Naruto was no different in that aspect.

He let her in without further ado, sighing at the way she moved inside with a happy gleam in her eyes; he looked away.

"I thought we could have dinner, of course," she finally answered, turning around to face him as he closed the door and locked it. He then calmly walked toward her, stopping when the distance between them was enough to be near, but enough to be able to breathe without the thought of her feigned ignorance to bother him.

When he just eyed her strangely, looking to and from the lunchbox clutched in her grasp, she flushed and blushed and panicked.

Her thoughts rushed.

She had just meant to have a normal dinner with him, and talk a little, and then leave to her house, just to keep him company while the rest of the village partook in one of the biggest events of the year.

But, with the way she had phrased the words, and the fact that she wasn't here for professional matters, and the realisation that they were alone in his apartment and she wasn't even going to check up on him, she only hoped he didn't suspect anything.

Having to see her childhood love almost every day of the week and having to restrain her feelings, locked away in a safe part of her heart, was already hard enough. She didn't need him to think anything else from her—she didn't want to push him.

He wouldn't think this was a date, right?

It was certainly not, though she kindly wished it to be in her mind sometimes at night, thinking too much about everything and anything, but he only ceased her panicked state when he spoke again to clarify her mind.

"No. I meant... Aren't you supposed to be at the Winter Festival?"

Sakura suppressed her embarrassed blush and just stood there, mouth agape at the stupidity she felt. Of course he hadn't thought this could be a date.

Even after the war, even after he had told her to wait, even after she had thought he reciprocated her feelings even the tiniest bit, they were anything but romantically involved.

"Oh," she let out, releasing the tension upon her shoulders and looking at him as if he had grown three heads; embarrassment turned into confusion in the span of three seconds. "You remembered."

Of course I remembered, he thought. "Naruto wouldn't stop talking about it today," he stated, instead, offhandedly, walking toward her as if nothing and grabbing the green lunchbox from her before moving away.

She felt the wheels in her head halt to a stop immediately, blanking and just looking at him for the longest time. Then, the wheels turned with newfound interest.

"What?" She exclaims a little too loud, the shock of the previous statement making her take two steps and touch his arm in alarm. She looked up at him with concern written in her features. "Naruto came by? How was it? What did he say? Did you guys fight again?"

Sasuke gave her a strange look, lifted the corners of his lips slightly, and moved to the kitchen with the food in his only hand.

"Calm down, we didn't fight," he sighed. "You explained everything to him, right?"

She nodded a little, afraid of his reaction to her revelation, but moved to the kitchen anyway.

"Why do you ask?"

Sasuke was opening the carefully wrapped lunchbox on the counter slowly when he answered. She paid attention closely.

"It was as if he didn't know anything. We just talked, and then he left," he explained.

Sakura didn't fail to notice the tension leave his shoulders, and his sigh of relief.

She had the urgency to sigh too. It was a relief that Naruto had looked past the disease and focused on giving Sasuke some sense of normalcy, instead of insisting about the sensitive topic and try to make things better, when they couldn't be.

Sakura felt a little smile come to life across her face. "So, you made up I see."

Sasuke gave her an almost funny look over his shoulder. "The idiot couldn't even last a week if he wanted to."

She felt a chuckle escape her, and he turned and looked at the contents of the box. A moment passed.

"Rice?"

He said it like he expected something more intricate, albeit that probably wasn't what was going through his mind.

She scoffed. "It's fried rice, excuse you. And I thought it would be a small dinner, that's all."

He nodded, and she grabbed the plates.

.

They didn't eat in silence, mainly because Sakura wouldn't stop talking about her week, but also because Sasuke was responding to everything she asked, and he was commenting here and there at her musings.

She took another bite, halfway through the warm meal of rice and vegetables.

"Do you go every year?"

"Mm?"

"To the festival," he said, taking another bite of the rice, although having a little difficulty lifting the fork to his lips, but she didn't act like she noticed. Instead, she just shook her head in denial, and swallowed before answering him.

"I used to visit with my parents before. After the war, the only time I've gone was last year," she explained, not meeting his eyes. "But that was only because I was free from the hospital and Lee forced me to go with him and Tenten."

She finally shifted her gaze to look at him, and he only lifted an eyebrow at the revelation.

She chuckled at his expression, letting the topic drop and focusing on finishing her meal.

A few heartbeats later, she almost spat her food back out.

"Lee's still at it, I see."

He was picking on his food, taking another bite like he had been commenting on the weather and not meeting her eyes, but she was still, looking at him in shock for the nth time during that evening.

She realised with baffled dawning that he was trying to keep the conversation going, something they hadn't done in years, and something that he usually steered away from. It brought some sense of playfulness in her, making her smile come out without warning.

With this in mind, she snapped out of her thoughts and decided to tease him a little. The talking, fun side of Sasuke didn't come to her often, after all.

"Jealous?" She asked, the smile turning into a small smirk pulling at the corners of her lips, eyes glinting.

Sasuke paused, for a moment, and looked up from his dish to gaze at her, before he continued eating as if nothing had left her mouth.

He didn't verbally respond, but the small smile on his face, hidden partly by his bangs, was more than an answer to her.

It didn't help that he hadn't denied the claim, nor ignored it. The answer was unspoken, teasing her back.

She felt her heartbeat in her ears like a constant, beating drum.

Knowing if she didn't keep her smotions in check she would probably blush and stutter away and excuse herself for the bathroom, she quickly changed the topic. And she just let out the first thing that came to mind, regretted it as soon as she said it.

"How are you feeling?"

And then, just as fast, the atmosphere changed around them.

He flinched—visibly flinched—and that's when Sakura regretted coming off so straightforward. As a doctor, she usually had more tact than this. As his doctor, though, she had to make sure his mental state wasn't deprimental and all over the floor. As a friend, she cared on a deeper level.

She cared.

"I just want to know, Sasuke-kun, as a friend," she said, putting her fork down and reaching over the table's surface to put her hand on his own tense one. He looked at her, and their eyes locked.

He didn't need to speak at all in that moment, for she saw his troubles through his clouded, mismatched eyes, but he talked anyway.

"I thought this was only a small dinner, Sakura," not a medical session, he forgot to add.

She saw through him clearly, like the water inside the cups that separated them.

"I haven't had time to check up on you in days, busy at work. You understand, right?" She sighed. "I worry about you, you know." And this she added in a softer, lower voice, almost hesitant to let him know.

It was almost a whisper, but Sakura knew he heard her, for the apartment was fairly quiet save for the festival noises a few feet from the building.

Sasuke only hardened his gaze at her, and looked at her hand on his own, so fragile and strong on his crooked curse.

Her hand, so small but so deadly, so smooth, so normal. He had a difficult time figuring out how she could still touch him; his hand, beneath hers, looked slightly deformed.

The sight brought a spark of anger to flare within him, and he answered her question.

"Like shit."

Sakura smiled despite his rigid shoulders and set jaw, wanting to hear talking-and-fun Sasuke once again. So she gave it one last try.

"Even after eating my amazing rice?"

There was a soft edge to her question, as if she was willing him to overlook his temperament.

Sasuke snorted, and it was all it took for the tension to leave his body in a gush of wind from the open window in the kitchen, so easily spelled away. Feeling lighter, he took his hand from under her gentle hold and took another bite of said rice.

"I'm still not done."

Her giggly laugh lifted a weight off his chest, if only for the remainder of the evening.


	4. Chapter 4

.

When Sakura started going over to Sasuke's apartment more often, he didn't question her. When she started showing up uninvited to his apartment more than just once a week, he didn't question it. If he ever minded, she never knew for sure.

.

She opened the door to his apartment with her spare key, making sure to close the door behind her. The house was quiet, as usual, but a look to the left showed Sasuke reading a scroll about leader tactics during combat on the couch. She had seen that scroll more times than necessary, and was sure that Sasuke had already memorised it.

Nevertheless, she doubted he was reading anyway, more like a distraction to pass the time.

Without her having to open her mouth to greet him, he looked up from his scroll with a disinterested look that rested upon her. He got up, shoved the scroll with the others on his bookshelf, and walked to the kitchen without further ado.

"I made tea for us," he said, with a familiarness that left her speechless. She had to force her jaw to close as she neared the room and saw him sitting down at the small table on the side of his kitchen, a cup in his hand and a cup in front of him—his fingers trembled lightly, but she only sat in front of him and took a sip of her own beverage.

The fact that it wasn't hot proved to her that he had been waiting for her for longer than what she thought.

He welcomed her like this some days.

He welcomed her as if he expected her to appear around the corner most days of the week, as if the mere action was written on her list of things to do for each day. As if it was a given.

She didn't give it much thought at the start; but then, when she did let her mind wander off into incomplete thoughts, she never came up with good answers. Why, for instance, did Sasuke just welcome her into his life everyday, without questions? As if it was nothing, just a constant in his ever-changing life.

It was on those nights that she let her mind wander, curled up in her bed, when she felt the most vulnerable. Thoughts of Sasuke seeing her as a constant in his life, someone he needed to see in order to feel rooted to the ground, didn't feel right in her mind. It wasn't Sasuke. It was a carbon copy of him, but just faded.

It didn't sit right with her.

But the fact that Sasuke didn't question her incessant visiting didn't mean that he was waiting all the time for her. The fact that he let her have a copy of his key didn't mean that he was always thinking about her and waiting for her to show up during the day.

Sasuke was human, after all, and the slowness of his disease was probably eating at him from the inside. He hadn't been angry or lashed out for at least one week, and it was more than Sakura expected.

So if her visiting made him stable for the time being, then so be it.

.

It snowed one January day, from morning to midnight.

Sakura entered his apartment in the morning; it was her day off, and she spent the early hours making two cups of warm chocolate and sitting on his balcony's railing.

The roof ended right over the tips of their suspended toes, and so the snow never really hit them. It looked like a curtain separating them from the world, from the stares, from the gossip.

They wasted a few minutes in silence, just looking at the white miracle in front of them, until she cleared her throat and wet her dry lips before speaking.

"You know, winter is my favourite season."

She was met with more silence for a few seconds; she dared think the magic of the spell encasing them would break, but she was proven wrong when he spoke calmly against the chilly breeze.

"I always thought it would be spring," he said. It made her hesitate and still her toes from swaying along gravity below the railing. It made her look at him, heart thundering inside her chest.

"What?" Her eyes showed curiosity, peeking from over the thick scarf around her neck and over the lower half of her face.

She was used to people associating her with the spring just because her name meant Sakura blossoms, which bloomed in the same season. Her family and her friends and strangers all thought her to be a personification of the warm season. She hadn't expected Sasuke to join the idea too, though. It threw her off completely.

"Why? Because of my name?"

When he turned his head to look at her, he couldn't disagree more. The shade of her eyes reminded him of certain rays of light filtering through the ocean's algae during summer, and her hair reminded him of the flowers during spring. Even her skin was a warm hue straight from the colours of fall. But not winter, never winter.

Winter was cold, and unforgiving, and cruel. It didn't remind him of Sakura in the least.

So, after he turned his head away and looked at the cascading snowflakes in front of them, he sighed his answer—a lie.

"Partly."

Hiding her hands in the pockets of her warm, knee-length coat, she accepted his reply, as vague as she imagined it to be from him.

"Aren't you cold?" She asked this instead of pushing him for a better answer. She shouldn't expect him to see her in a different light from everyone else, after all.

"No."

At his short answer, she snapped out of her jumbled thoughts, and crashed into the present.

Instantly, her eyes roamed over his figure.

She begged to differ; his attire wasn't fitting for this cold ambiance. He wore a long-sleeved, brown shirt and long, khaki trousers. She even wore a sweater under her long coat and scarf, and gloves. He was underdressed for even the few puffs of wind chilling her bones through her clothes.

"Where's your cloak? You always wear it; I can get it for you," she said as she pushed herself off the railing and onto the balcony's floor. When he turned his head slightly toward her, she suppressed a gasp—how could she have missed the way his teeth were chattering against his tight jaw's wishes?

For a moment, she thought he was going to tell her to forget it and to come back to the railing as the stubborn man that he was, but he just nodded a little and it made her want to slap his stupidity away. He had been cold all along!

"On the sofa," was all he said before he turned back to look at the snow. Sakura acquiesced and returned with the cloak one minute later, wanting to shove it in his face at his recklessness.

Instead, for reasons she knew too well, she pried it open and came up from behind him, putting it over his broad back carefully. Almost hugging him from behind, she reached out around his chest and tied the ends together, trying to cover him entirely from the cold as best as she could.

As soon as her arms left his torso, she thought she felt him shiver, but dismissed it as his body adjusting to the warmth of the cloak.

She once again sat on the railing next to him, and they continued to look upon the space separating them from everything else in the world.

.

It was during the late evening that it started.

She had been drying the plates Sasuke washed—somehow—when the wind picked up. As soon as she looked behind her to check on what was happening beyond the window, the plate almost slipped from her hands. Sasuke stopped what he'd been doing and looked behind him as well.

In the time they ate and washed everything, in some way, a blizzard had been forming around them. It wasn't that common in Konoha; the last time she'd seen one was two years ago.

The pounding heavy balls of snow mixed with the powerful surges of wind rattled the windows all over the apartment like a horror movie. Sakura looked at Sasuke, and he looked back.

"I think I can probably-"

A flickering happened above them, and then the power was out, the house plunged into darkness.

"Damn it," she cursed, feeling around her for something she didn't know she was looking, "do you have candles around?"

When no answer was uttered, she stopped her hand movements and looked up at his form.

His sleeve brushed against her side, and she tried to grab it at the last moment, but he left the room one second later. Sakura frowned against the uncertainty.

Taking hesitant steps toward the kitchen's exit (or what she hoped was the exit), she prepared to call him again, but his dark silhouette stilled her thoughts.

"Sasuke-kun?"

"Come," he said, motioning her forward with his hand. Sakura obliged and stood right next to him, her arms folded and flinching slightly when the branch of a tree hit the living room's window.

"I can still leave, Sasuke-kun," she muttered, biting her lip while she tried to think about her escape. "If I hurry, I'll be fine."

He looked at her, and she knew because his red eye shone through the darkness, making him look much more intimidating than usual.

"No," was all he said.

"Hm? Why's that?"

"You're not leaving, Sakura; not with the weather like this," with a sigh, he looked at the small fireplace in front of him. Living on the last floor of the building had its perks. "I could make a fire with my jutsu, but... I don't have logs."

"You have a chimney without firewood?"

"It's a rented apartment I barely use, Sakura, why would I go firewood shopping?"

"You could burn some of your scrolls or books," she suggested. Immediately, she felt his eyes on her, drilling holes into her skull for even mentioning such a thing. "Look, it's either that or we freeze to death."

With a small grunt of defeat, Sasuke walked past her and grabbed a few scrolls from the bottom shelf, she hoped not that important to him. With a toss, they were all inside the fireplace. With a few hand signs, nothing happened.

Sakura waited for the fire to start, but after a few seconds of nothing happening, she thought Sasuke reconsidered her proposal and was about to pick up his precious scrolls from their doom.

A muttered curse falling from his lips proved her wrong.

"Fuck," the contour of his profile was visible to her night-accustomed eyes, and she frowned at the way he was so concentrated on the simple task of lighting a fire. His eyes remained on his fingers, which were trying to form the horse sign.

Only that they couldn't because they were too twisted to curve all at the same angle with the exception of the index finger, which had to remain straight. His constant illness knocked at the confines of her brain and she felt her lip tremble.

Sakura observed him awhile longer, hoping he would either give up or suddenly succeed against his odds.

When a minute passed and none of that happened—but he kept repeating the previous signs in hopes of getting the horse right—she sighed. With warm fingers, her hand touched his own, and she brought it down to his side.

Before he could pry her hand away and shy away from her in embarrassment and frustration, she entwined her hand with his own, guiding him around his apartment like he didn't know where anything was located.

The silence would be palpable were it not for the constant sound of the windows shaking, and the wind blowing outside.

Once inside his room, she let go of his hand and walked to the only window there, covering it with the dark curtains to match their predicament. Sighing a small puff of nervous air, she steeled her resolve and unzipped her sweater, throwing it to the side. She grabbed the ends of her shirt and pulled it over her head, letting the material drop to the floor quietly.

She thought she heard a small gasp behind her.

"What are you doing," he demanded it more than he asked it, and in one second he was facing the door of the room.

Sakura turned around, faced his back and put her hands on her hips as if he was stupid. "I am taking off my clothes."

She slid her trousers down her legs quickly, lest she gave up and put everything on again with the help of the furious blush adorning her cheeks. A rough shake of the window behind her made her more adamant in her quest, and she let the trousers fall too.

Her underwear would remain on, at least.

"Yeah, I know that," with a tight fist, he released a shaky breath. "But why."

"Because we don't have a fire and I'm about to shiver to death, Sasuke-kun," she explained. "Our only options now are hypothermia or body heat, so undress."

He was about to say that he could always change the temperature of the house, but he remembered that it would be futile with no-

"There's no power, and the water is probably going to freeze, so we just have to wait this out for the night."

"We don't have to undress," he muttered.

"Have you ever read about situations like these? Don't you travel all the time? You surely know this has to be done when there are no other resources."

He stayed in front of the door for what seemed like a lifetime, but it simply was until he didn't hear a sound in the room.

"Turn around, Sasuke-kun, you can't see me anymore," she whispered against the bed's covers, afraid that he was going to go to the living room or something and leave her to freeze to death. Her voice was softer now, mindful that the man was just frustrated they had to reach such primitive ideas just because he couldn't form a few signs with his deformed, crooked hand.

He seethed.

But he turned, and he took off his clothes except for his underwear, and he climbed onto the other side of the bed, giving her his back.

Always giving her his back. She wasn't having it.

"You know, we have to be close in order to share the heat."

"Then come closer."

With a very clear roll of her eyes amidst the darkness, she moved her body closer to his, deciding that if she put her back against his, it counted for something.

They fell asleep to the sound of the windows moving relentlessly.

.

Sometime in the middle of the night, the storm diminished slightly.

Sometime in the middle of the night, she was shivering like crazy. So he turned around and wrapped his only arm over her small body, careful not to touch too much skin. Chest to chest, he fell asleep again.

They woke up with legs tangled and bodies entwined, blushing like teenagers and muttering apologies.

.

Sakura looked until the librarian grew concerned and asked if she wanted help. But even with expert help, she couldn't find anything on Sasuke's disease.

She had spent more than an hour at the library, looking over every book in every section and crevice, to no avail. There was nothing that could inform her of his condition; nothing that could give her the details that no one in the village seemed to possess.

And now no place in the village seemed to have those details either.

With an exasperated sigh, she flopped down on a sofa next to the section titled "Medicinal Files: Strange Cases."

How could it be so hard to find information on a disease that had happened, albeit scarcely, before in the village? Was it so uncommon that no book even mentioned it?

It was nearing two hours of searching, and she was tired—more mentally than physically, no less—because she had never felt so useless.

It reminded her of her younger days. Useless and powerless. The difference was that, even then, she knew what she had to do to improve and be better—she just chose not to practice. Now, she didn't know anything at all.

She had been trying to find some kind of information for three days now, but she received no luck.

It was frustrating, it screwed with her mind and made her hide her face in her palms. She only wanted to help. She only wanted to find a solution.

What if there wasn't a solution? What if she was just trying to find a cure that didn't exist?

"Excuse me, miss," a voice beside her made her jump slightly, catching her unawares.

She looked up and straightened her back, feeling embarrassed all of a sudden at being caught like this, with elbows on her knees and hands hiding her face as if she'd just received the worst news ever.

She might have.

"Yes?"

The man smiled at her tentatively, obviously not knowing what to make of her messy updo and the dark bags under her eyes. He cleared his throat and took a seat next to her on the ample sofa.

"I heard you talking about a disease with the librarian," she nodded a little, still confused about where this was going, "I'm from a small village next to Suna; a doctor, actually, one of the few. I decided to come here because I hear the hospital's one of the best—plus, I've got family." He looked at the people studying and reading scrolls and books all around them at tables. "Are you a doctor, miss?"

Her ears were having trouble connecting the sounds together to make a coherent sentence.

Sakura felt that she had lost her mind after all. Her eyes kept focusing and unfocusing between the floor and the face of this man who seemed too eager to share his life with her.

When the lines cleared a little more and she finally could make out his blue eyes, she nodded.

"Yeah, I am. I work at the hospital here."

No need to brag about co-directing said hospital, she thought.

"I just sent my application yesterday; I hope we work together!"

His enthusiasm was very needed at the moment, but it only brought her a slight headache in the nauseous state she still had.

"Anyway, if you can't find anything here, Suna has a section in the hospital just for rare cases," he said.

The world stilled.

As if she'd been electrocuted, the dizziness left her body and she stood up and looked at him with eyes bright and sparkly. "Suna? Really?"

He looked out of place, suddenly struck by her enthusiasm. "Yes, they have a ton of diseases that are not that common, or heard of. It's very interesting, actually."

Her heart filled itself again with hope, and she rushed to grab her bag and her jacket.

"That's amazing, thank you so much! I've been here for so long already, and I've looked in my apartment and around the village too, but there's no sign of what I'm looking for."

He smiled, stood up, and offered his hand. She shook it as soon as she finished putting on her jacket.

"I'm Mosuma, by the way."

"Sakura, nice to meet you!"

And just like that, she left.

To the Hokage tower.

.

This is how she didn't see Sasuke for two weeks.


	5. Chapter 5

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She spent her days at the lab at Suna's main hospital, testing and re-testing and revising. Her work proved to be nothing short of complex. In between sips of long-gone-cold coffee and bathroom breaks, she never stopped working.

Her eyes screamed for closure and her bones yelled for rest. But she couldn't let herself waste any more time that was necessary.

Her days in Suna were counted. She couldn't afford to not use her days as best as she could; Sasuke couldn't wait for too long for her to find some answers.

She had to find them now, or else the disease could progress even more and hinder her findings.

She worked day and sometimes night. She worked until she couldn't feel her eyelids anymore and her fingers burned.

Gaara had granted her access to anything she wanted from the hospital, Kankuro had given her a temporary apartment to sleep at (even if she barely stepped inside, ever), and Temari had checked in on her and shared talks with her here and there, if only to make sure Sakura still possessed some kind of sanity.

She spent her days in the lab, and she left it after one week and four days of constant struggle, a stack of papers inside the bag on her back.

.

Sakura stepped into Konoha running. Her core pumped chakra to her legs with the strength her heart bled out.

She felt determination coursing through her, the way her eyes hardened as she jumped from rooftop to rooftop, in search for an apartment on a top floor she knew too well.

She had been running for hours, ever since the sun had dipped under her side of the horizon. It had taken her, from the border of Fire, around twenty-five hours nonstop to reach the gates of the Hidden Village. Ever since she passed the border into Fire Country, she hadn't stopped running. By now, her hair was beyond oily and with twigs tangled in it; her clothes were sticking to her skin like a second layer because of the sweat, disgusting and sticky.

There were remnants of snow on the ground wherever her feet touched, but all she felt was warmth spreading through her—the hours she had spent running were taking a toll on her. Her bones and muscles screamed for her to stop already.

But she endured; she had to.

Back in Suna, she had tried her hardest to find something—anything—that might explain why Sasuke got the disease. Or a possible cure for it.

She had found enough to know what to do.

.

Sasuke's door was already flung open when she got there. He was outside, standing there with his right hand in the pocket of his trousers, all regal and mighty.

To anyone it might seem like he was passively looking outside his complex. She noticed, though, the way his jaw was set and how his eyes shone with that something when she came into his line of sight.

And as soon as she entered, he slammed the door shut with such force that the walls moved, the reverberation making the floor shake as well. And all the hours, all the time spent running, all the determination and the words at the tip of her tongue extinguished at once when he approached her slowly, his eyes dark and unnerving. He seemed calm; too calm, in her opinion, but still managed to resemble a dangerous predator with the intent to kill.

She didn't know what to do with it, so she stood there, sweat rolling down her cheek and onto the wooden floor. For a moment whilst he approached her, all she could listen to were the hurried puffs of air coming out of her mouth from her body's exertion.

"Sasuke-kun-"

"Where the fuck were you?" He asked; no, more like demanded of her. He spat the words out like he had been holding them for too long and they just had to get out. He looked at her like he had been angry for far too long. Angry at her, or angry at himself? She frowned at his unexpected fury.

"What?"

All she could do was take a step back, figuratively and physically. It wasn't like Sasuke to lash out like that, specially when she hadn't done anything truly, irrevocably wrong. He had no idea what she had been doing!

Which is why, she wondered for an instant, he had probably asked the question to start with.

She understood, she knew he had most likely been confused about her unannounced, missed weekly meetings, but she also knew that he had taken her completely off-guard. She hadn't expected him to be so crude as soon as she entered his apartment after a two-week absence. Hell, she had wanted so badly to tell him the news of her discoveries over a cup of tea.

Instead, both their chests heaved up and down in unison; hers in exhaustion, his in anger. And their eyes locked in a fight of defiance a few inches apart.

Sasuke lost first, sighing his defeat and sagging his shoulders from their tensed altitude.

"Where were you? It's been two weeks, and Kakashi didn't want to tell me." He asked again, and this time it was slower and calmer, with a hint of vulnerability in the honest inquiry. She noticed how his eye turned from red to black after looking her over and noticing the noticeable changes in her spent physique.

Sakura didn't comment on how he had admitted he had asked Kakashi for her whereabouts, but she was so tired she didn't even have the strength to blush.

Yes, she looked a mess and she was well aware of it, but that wasn't the important issue at hand.

Sakura smiled between full lips, showing her pearly white teeth in a sweet gesture toward him. She spoke softly, quietly. But, to him, she might as well have had yelled.

"I went to Suna for answers; they have a really good research lab for rare diseases," she said, coming closer and finding his hand beneath the confines of his cloak's oversized sleeve, and holding it while looking at its subtle changes over her period of absence. "I found them."

.

It wasn't the same after that. She noticed.

She saw the hope in his eyes, felt the contentment showing on his face, tasted the faith he had in her expertise.

Only that she didn't have any expertise in the field of this disease, and her two weeks spent in Sunagakure only gave her the basics.

She didn't tell this to Sasuke, of course, but it still rang in her head as she prepared to see him for the second time in the week after her return home.

She entered his apartment with her custom spare key, the wood creaking softly when she opened the door.

He had been quiet about her findings, overall, and didn't ask any questions or prodded into her research. But, as soon as they set themselves on the sofa in his living room that cold January evening, that all stopped.

"What exactly did you find?"

He wanted answers, she could tell, but it wasn't that simple.

"Well, first you should ask what I was looking for," she retorted.

He gave her a funny look over his shoulder; she was sitting behind him, both of her arms perpendicular to the couch's rest.

"I know that. You wanted to find the cause; things like that," he stayed silent. "You wanted to find more about the treatment, to help prolong the disease."

Taking a shaky breath in, she stilled the hands on his back and lowered them. Staring at his broad shoulders, she spoke.

"No, Sasuke-kun." It was the way she said it, as if he knew nothing, that made his heart skip a beat against his better judgement. "I was looking for a cure. And I think I can find it."

Sasuke slowly turned around after a few heartbeats, facing her on the couch with a look she could not describe for the life of her. She could not decipher the heavy-eyed look, the cautionary eyes, the defensive posture.

She didn't let him speak—it's not like she thought he could anyway.

"This... Condition happens when motor neurons die in the brain and spinal cord. They are the nerve cells that transmit signals to every part of the body so that it can perform voluntary movements efficiently.

"When damage is done to these cells, every voluntary muscle movement begins to fail, as you already know. I found that one cause can be a chemical invalance in your brain, or an increase in your body's release of the neurotransmitter glutamate."

She sighed when she was done explaining, looking at him with a worried look. He stared back at her after a second of processing the words, almost biting his lower lip with a question that couldn't be helped. He had to ask now that she had explained to him most of her findings, even though most of the terms she had used were nonsense in his head.

"Which one is it, then?"

There was a heavy edge to his question, she noted. His frown was carved on the planes of his stony face, which now showed rare signs of worry. Sakura couldn't help but feel for him.

Her heart ached inside her chest, as if it was twisting inside, painfully and mistakenly true. She looked at him and her eyes shone with worry, she felt incredibly useless for not being able to pinpoint what was wrong quickly. The only thing she wanted was his health back; didn't matter if their relationship went nowhere; didn't matter if he left the next day on his travels.

The only thing she wanted was seeing him healthy and happy. She couldn't remember the last time he had left the village, and she was sure he was craving the rush of adventure. And it wasn't even his travels which were in danger, but the mere idea of being a ninja was being compromised.

With this in mind, she spoke, determined.

"I'll figure it out this session, I promise. I just need to locate the source and it was hard last time because my chakra levels were low," she said. He nodded and turned back around to face his kitchen. "I want to rule out the options I studied first."

He didn't ask further; didn't prod on. He didn't ask if there was an actual possibily of being really cured, fully healed, completely healthy.

She was actually glad he didn't, because she didn't know what to tell him for sure, for now, right when she had started to figure out how to find the source of the problem.

.


	6. Chapter 6

.

Sakura walked down the streets of Konoha on a sunny day. Being almost February, spring was planning to arrive soon and take all the chilly days away. Honestly, she couldn't remember a year when it had snowed so much in the village of the hidden leaf, but she had recently heard that there was a cold front swiping all over Fire; it was going to last a few days. Sakura sighed.

She walked with no purpose.

Strolling down the worn-down, almost empty streets of one of the village's extremes—to the East end, closest to her apartment—she spotted the familiar signs of the shops she had always visited, whether alone or alongside her parents when little, and walked toward them with a newfound purpose.

She woke up feeling refreshed. After a few-too-many long shifts at the hospital—night shifts, specifically—she had found herself feeling so tired that she couldn't focus during Sasuke's healing sessions more than once.

It was bothersome and she knew it, so yesterday she had checked over Sasuke's condition, and spent the entire day and night sleeping. Tsunade had more than agreed to let her take the day off.

From all that sleeping, she had woken up feeling disoriented, but anew all in all. Sasuke probably wasn't waiting for her today; she had overheard that Naruto was going to spend the day with his best friend. And so she didn't have a purpose.

Until now.

She entered the first shop, a tiny doorway that led to an even tinier infrastructure. It was a fruit shop, only meant for fresh fruits, so she didn't mind the spacing of it. Plus, it was normal to her since her parents had always been friends with every little shop in the area.

The clerk was young. She frowned.

"Hey, is Kawazaki-san not working today?" She asked the young man; he was probably fourteen by the looks of it.

The boy shook his head with a small blush and a stammer. "N-No. I mean, yes, he's working today," he scratched at the back of his head nervously and someone she knew too well jumped into her memory. She smiled.

"Okay, so where is he then?"

A large, robust man in his last years of middle-age came out from under the silk of the shop's entrance, eyes dropping on her a little too soon to realise who she was right away.

"Welcom- Hey! It's been a while since I last saw ya," the man immediately smiled and put a familiar hand on her bony shoulder. "How are ya'll holding up? How are your folks? I haven't seen them bunch in a month, and they better be gettin' their fruits from me only!"

Sakura chuckled at his characteristic informal language, always high spirited and made-up. Sometimes, with all the titles she has held and all the things she has accomplished, she forgets that she's the daughter of simple, Genin, free-minded parents. The wave of memories in stores like these hit her like a cold breeze in the summer. It was very much needed.

Sakura has been fighting for longer than she can remember, and the civilian lifestyle has never really tempted her in the way her parents would have wanted it to, but it is relaxing to spend a day like one, once in awhile.

"We're all fine, Kawazaki-san, thank you," she smiled. "I actually came to buy fruit for myself. My kitchen is pretty much empty."

"Well, it is one fine morning to get the freshest of fruits here!" He heard a sigh from behind Sakura and finally took notice of the boy in a corner of the store. "Oh! How impolite of me, this is my nephew." He pointed at the boy behind the carton counter, cheeks flushed pink and eyes innocent.

"I'm Wrenik, pleasure to meet you."

"Sakura, and likewise."

Sakura didn't comment on how she had never heard that name before, but she didn't dwell on it too much—his mother had probably read the name in one of the few foreign books the village had at the library, for all she knew.

She ended up buying enough fruits to last her for two weeks, even though she barely spent any time at home anymore these days.

And as she paid and reached for her brown bag of food, held out to her by Wrenik, a thought struck her like lightning.

Sasuke had reached for a similar bag a few months ago, way before she was trying to find a cure to save his life, and way before she knew she had to find a cure to save his life.

She remembered how his fingers twisted abnormally, and how his face showed the slightest trace of discomfort and effort in the small act of lifting a bag full of groceries.

She left the shop with a million thoughts in her head, all of them sour memories, rushing through her like ice-cold water.

She stopped walking around Konoha after that.

.

Sasuke's disease was sporadic.

It made everything more difficult because now she wasn't looking for anything in particular. The search for his cure had had a setback, and her research had had a halt. Everything was in broader terms now; how was she supposed to heal him when she didn't specifically know what to heal?

The news had made Sasuke's shoulders sag the previous day, when she had tried to find the cause of his disease. The bit of hope his heart had harboured was flushed down the drain when she told him his disease was of the sporadic kind, the kind that was the hardest to treat—and explained what it meant when he had looked at her with a confused face.

The last three weeks felt like a waste of time, even though she knew they probably weren't. After all, she knew she had found leads, enough for her to get a clearer idea about the disease and how to treat it, since nobody in the world knew about the disease much anyway.

But she had an idea of where to start, even if she didn't know what to specifically target.

She could heal the motor neurons in the spinal cord and the brain, although it could lead to nothing. The complexity of the task, coupled with the perplexingly small neurons, plus her lack of expertise, made everything a challenge.

She frowned, hand halting in the air as she was putting two red apples inside the fridge.

She had healed individual cells before, in the most arduous times of war. She had suspended poison and toxins in the air, extracted them from a tiny incision made on skin. She had created antidotes that hadn't existed before. She had released the ultimate healing seal.

Sakura could repair the connections between motor neurons. She just had to try hard enough.

.

A week rolled by and Sakura had her hands on the sides of his head.

She shot a minuscule amount of healing chakra to the tips of her fingers, pressing the pads of her fingers firmer against the different portions of his brain.

It was delicate, this procedure, but she had walked him through every detail and she was going to do everything in her power to help in one way or the other.

It wasn't a matter of her help, but rather a matter of how she was going to help. Sakura wanted to help, no question about it, but the complexity of his condition—coupled with the mysterious derived cause—was something that threatened to hold her prowess back.

She had spent two weeks in Sunagakure, researching every possible symptom, cause, and/or cure, and she had actually thought she'd come close to explaining everything.

How stupid of her.

She wasn't even remotely close to finding the truth.

But, as she closed her eyes behind him on the small of his sofa so she could concentrate, she knew she wasn't about to tell him that she had probably wasted two weeks of precious research.

Because she had researched about the different possible causes, because it hadn't crossed her mind that his condition could be spontaneous, because she had been completely and irrevocably sure that it was caused by something specific, even though she had first assumed it was sporadic anyway, back when she had first diagnosed him. But a small part of her had had hope back in Suna. If his condition had been caused by something in particular, it would have given her less trouble to find a path to recovery.

It wasn't the case, and now she had no idea what to do.

Instead of sulking and giving up—giving up just wasn't an option—she focused on the task at hand.

Sasuke's breathing was regular and slow, and her chakra gave way into his brain patiently and easily. She molded her green chakra into small, delicate tendrils, reaching out to the different neurons she found.

As soon as she could find scattered, severed connections, she would be able to join them.

Sasuke was counting on her, so she did nothing but endure through almost two arduous hours.

.

"Naruto! Hey, wait up!"

The blond turned around on the busy street one Saturday morning, looking for the mop of pink hair in the crowd running toward him.

"Sakura-chan! I haven't seen you in forever!" He enveloped her in a tight hug when she got to him, right there in the middle of the street. The open display of affection earned them a few disapproving glares, but neither of them really minded. Civilians were too conservative sometimes.

"You idiot," she laughed as he let her down, "I saw you yesterday! You came to the hospital with a hundred bruis-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever," with a small blush, he shook his head and smiled at her, leading them both to a more secluded part of the street. "It feels like forever, anyway. What's up?"

"Nothing, just that you left your stupid frog wallet at my office yesterday," she took it out of her purse, all worn-down and old and disgustingly green, and he took it from her while beaming.

"No way! I've been looking for this for such a loooong time. Thanks, Sakura-chan!" And then, before she could say anything, he enveloped her in a bone-crushing hug again.

She never got tired of his warm hugs—even when she faked being bothered. She could see why Hinata was always trying to hug him (when not too many people were around, of course, she had noticed).

When she was on the ground again, Sakura scoffed. It had only been a day since he lost his wallet, yet he sounded like he had been looking for it for months on end.

"How's Sasuke-kun? I heard you spent the day with him last week," she said it as if she hadn't seen him the week before too. She had been busy at the hospital since her last visit, so she hadn't seen him again. Maybe Naruto had.

She was proved right when he smiled even more and his eyes shone brightly.

"He's a total jerk, as usual! I was at his house yesterday, after you healed me," he chuckled before a smirk found its way to his full, wicked lips. "He asked about you."

"Who? Sasuke-kun?"

"Oh boy, he's so pathetic. He looked like a dog in heat when he thought you had come with me."

He burst out laughing, and Sakura flushed red in embarrassment. She didn't know what to say to that.

"Come on, let's pay him a visit now," he said, sliding his bandaged arm around her shoulders and leading her toward their friend's apartment at a leisurely pace.

Sakura only smiled and changed the topic, preferring to ignore Naruto's rare observation. It was much easier to ignore it than to really take it into account.

After all, Sasuke seemed his usual, stoic self when he opened the door for them.

.

Before she knew it, five months had gone by since his diagnosis; since the day he had fallen to the floor and had had his first seizure, specifically, up until now—not that he had had any since then.

The month of February had passed by her in a flash. She could only remember the prank Naruto had tried to do on Valentine's Day—he had tried to leave flowers for Sakura signed by Sasuke, but it had ended up with Naruto at the hospital for two days, the injuries inflicted by two parties. Other than that, February was full of the same instances, over and over and over.

She was at his apartment now, of course, washing the plates they had just used for dinner. Sasuke had briefly gone to the bathroom, so she had finished washing and drying before he could be back to complain.

When she was done with everything, she steeled herself with a tight grip against the metal of the sink, taking in a deep breath and closing her eyes for a moment.

She had just come back from a long shift at the hospital; she was still wearing several spots of blood here and there on her clothes, since she had gone directly to his apartment after work.

Sasuke came in the kitchen.

"Hey, before I look at you, could you do me a favour?" She asked, pushing herself gently off the sink's cold material. He looked at her quizzically, so she spoke up before her resolve could shatter. "Could you lend me one of your shirts? I don't want to ruin your couch; I already took a big risk sitting at your dinner table."

She felt a smile flower into bloom on her face, nervous and unsure. Sasuke only nodded once, not even sparring her attire a look, only trusting what she was saying. He came back one minute later, carrying a black shirt with no logo on the back.

She frowned when she noticed this—she frowned even more when she noticed it was the first thing she had taken note of.

Apparently, her curious ogling had not gone unnoticed. Sasuke was regarding her with amusement when she looked from the shirt to him.

"I use it to sleep sometimes," at her confused expression, he cleared his throat. "Not all my clothes have the Uchiha clan symbol."

"Oh, no, it's not that, it's just..."

He stared.

"Okay, fine, I always thought all your clothes had the symbol. When we were in Team Seven I thought you slept with the symbols all over your pyjamas," after she said this, she blushed. She had spoken without a filter, just spewing words everywhere without thinking much, which was a fatal mistake in the presence of Sasuke. His calculating gaze read over the words like a machine.

And her words not only implied that she used to think about him all the time, but also that she used to imagine him wearing different attires—or none.

She blushed harder at that. Get a grip, Sakura.

They were older now, and she couldn't risk having those thoughts anymore, specially with her role in Sasuke's healing.

Her love and adoration for him wasn't anything new to them, though, so she just cleared her throat and clutched the shirt harder, deciding to ignore her own comment and racing heartbeat.

She skipped past him quickly and opened the door of the bathroom in order to change, only to clutch the handle tightly as his next words caressed her ears, soft like velvet.

"We're still Team Seven."

It had been a whisper, almost like it pained him to say it because he couldn't believe that she thought they weren't Team Seven. They would always be, and she knew that.

She turned her head to look at him with a bittersweet smile, eyes shiny and head filled with memories. If he had been asked the same thing three years ago, he would have fought to prove that he wasn't part of Team Seven. This just showed how much he had come around.

"Yes, we are."

They shared a silent look, and then she entered the bathroom and closed the door with a soft click.

.


	7. Chapter 7

.

Sakura took a sip of the large bottle of Sake and put it back on the glass of her coffee table.

Naruto exclaimed loudly that it was his turn, and Sasuke scowled deeper.

It was Sakura's birthday.

Well, technically, it was the day before Sakura's birthday, but they had agreed to spend it at her apartment the night before because Naruto was to leave on a mission first thing in the morning of her actual birthday.

It had made little sense in her brain. If Naruto wasn't there, then it would be okay with her. His absence wouldn't mean he didn't love her any less.

But no. Naruto had raged when she'd proposed the mere idea of him missing her birthday party, as if it was a sin.

So now Naruto, Sasuke, and Sai were at her apartment drinking the early hours of the night away, all in a circle around her coffee table on the floor of the living room; Kakashi had said he couldn't make it, but that he would be there for her actual party the next day.

Naruto and Sai faced each other, leaving Sakura and Sasuke to do the same. Sasuke was to Naruto's left, and she to Naruto's right.

Sakura looked at him.

"It was your turn two turns ago, Naruto, now it's Sai's turn," she chastised him. She hadn't lost enough times to be considered drunk—or tipsy, even. None of them had.

"Oh?" The pale man looked up from the drawing he was making on a flimsy napkin and smiled, falsely as usual. "Okay. What were the rules again?"

"You just make one statement that's wrong and two that are right, and we have to guess which of those is the wrong one. If we're right, you drink. If we're wrong, we drink."

"Alright," he said. It only took him two seconds before he was spilling out the blunt statements. "Sakura is ugly, Sasuke is a bastard, and Naruto has a small penis."

Finishing with a smile, everyone stared at him with their mouths slightly open. Those sounded more like his usual nicknames for them than anything else. Sakura felt her fists close tightly below the table, but she held the anger in and, instead, opened her mouth to answer with a biting retort.

Sasuke and Naruto spoke before her first, though, in unison—only that Naruto was yelling and Sasuke was speaking softly.

"Sakura is ugly."

"Hey! I don't have a small penis! Watch it, Sai, or else!"

"Or else what?"

"Or else you'll have my fist down your throat!"

"No, thank you," Sai politely responded. "And you of all people should know how your pea-sized penis looks."

"You wanna take a second look? I'll show you right now, you jerk!" She heard the sound of his belt being unfastened in the back of her head, and with that the sound of Sasuke punching Naruto followed.

Sakura barely paid any attention to the commotion of screams over Sasuke's words, which were constantly ringing in her head for a good minute. Like a mantra, they played over and over in her head, creating a motif of insecurities she hadn't really felt since she was thirteen.

He thought...

Sai only stared at Naruto with amusement dancing in his eyes, and then his focus—to Sakura's chagrin—moved to Sasuke with a glint in his dark stare. Sakura felt a shiver run down her arms at what she knew was going to happen. Sai never had remorse after his frank, genuine inquires flew out of his mouth, and he seemed to somehow know when to specifically bring them up to make everyone feel their most awkward self.

"So, Sasuke, Sakura is ugly?" Sai questioned.

"Huh?" Naruto, whom she didn't know had got up amidst his rage and his need to proof he was a man, sat back down, puzzled. "Whattaya mean?"

The only thing Sasuke did was stare at Sai—impassive face and all—, really, the complete package of aristocracy and stoicism.

"Sakura is very pretty, 'ttebayo!"

"Sasuke seemed like he was agreeing with me on her ugliness, though," Sai uttered, crossing his arms disinterestedly over his chest. "It looks like we finally have something in common."

"No way! Sasuke, tell him!"

"What I meant," Sasuke muttered, shooting mental arrows toward Naruto and Sai as if he was ten seconds from exploding, "is that I was simply repeating the winning statement."

A heartbeat passed.

I was simply repeating the winning statement.

Sakura swallowed.

"So..." Naruto wondered aloud. "You think she's ugly? How dare you!"

"You idiot," Sasuke answered under his breath. Leave it to Naruto to jump to conclusions without even thinking. Sasuke wondered if he had already used up all of his few remaining neurons, because that seemed to be the only logical explanation.

"I'm still here, you know, and I still haven't answered Sai," she spoke up. She already felt embarrassed enough to let them continue. It was getting on her nerves; on one hand, Sai was calling her ugly, while on the other hand, Naruto and Sasuke were calling her pretty. Naruto and Sasuke.

She didn't really care what they thought, she just wanted to end this turn of the game so she didn't have to dwell about Sasuke's admission. Was it even an admission? What was he even thinking? He couldn't possibly be drunk so early on with the game.

"Sasuke is just saying you're pretty, Sakura," when said woman refused to meet anyone's gaze and preferred to chew on her bottom lip, as if in deep thought, he frowned, genuinely confused. "Are you embarrassed?"

"What? No!" Sakura almost hissed, but Sai looked so baffled—like he was ruffling through the page of a book he had read long ago about these situations, but coming up short—that she just sighed and looked around the table.

Naruto was eating some chips out of a bag, utterly clueless about his surroundings, Sai was smiling without a care in the world once again, and Sasuke...

Sasuke was looking at her, piercing his black and lilac eyes onto her green. Everything seemed to move in slow motion and fade away from her field of view when they stared at each other, and Sakura had to do everything in her power to stop her hands from reaching toward him from across the rectangular table.

She couldn't help feeling like this on some days—actually, her feelings had been all over the place ever since she returned from Suna—but she could help her actions from ruining whatever they were building.

She loved him, yes, but she was over the affectionate displays and gestures of love. It hadn't helped her in the past at all and it really wasn't going to help her now.

She knew that, although during times like these the only thing she wanted to do was have him close. And hold him. And have him hold her.

It was pointless to feel like this. She knew that too.

"What's your answer then?" Sai questioned.

Sakura's gaze didn't falter from Sasuke's eyes when she answered, the words rolling off her tongue like lava on stone, so natural that everyone stayed quiet.

"Sasuke is a bastard," she muttered, being cautious about the suffix of endearment she always used for him (because Sai hadn't used it).

'Sasuke is a bastard,' which meant that it was wrong, which meant that Sai had been telling the truth for 'Sakura is ugly' and 'Naruto has a small penis.'

She almost saw Sasuke's lips twitch upward, but it was incredibly difficult to discern such a detail when Naruto was throwing himself at Sai from across the table, right in between them.

"Damn it, Sai! Tell me the answer!"

"What answer?"

"Tell us which of your statements was false," Sakura interjected, feeling a vein pop on her forehead at the incredibly difficult time Sai was having at a game.

"Oh," a pause. "They were all true, though."

"What?"

"Ugh! What the hell, Sai? That's not how it's supposed to work!" Naruto said. Sai only smiled through everyone's glare.

"I guess everyone has to drink."

They all ended up taking a shot.

.

Sakura woke up to a mess of limbs and snoring, and she looked through the rays of sunlight to find herself in the middle of Sasuke and Sai, sandwiched to the brim. Naruto was gone for his mission, Sasuke was swinging his arm over her waist, and Sai was with his leg over hers. And Sakura had a slight hangover.

It was not bothersome enough to make her get up, so she went back to sleep with a little smile. It was a peaceful morning, and she couldn't help but chuckle at the way Sasuke jumped away from her warm body when he opened his eyes, startled.

She cooked them breakfast to the sound of birds chirping outside her kitchen window.

.

March ended with a triumphant finale, making the days brighter and full of hope to everyone's eyes. Her heart had started to feel so light that she'd thought she was happy, making progress, healing, and taking care of Sasuke all at once. Everything was looking brighter at the half-year mark of his condition.

Of course, it didn't last long. Fate hadn't always treated everyone on Team Seven so kindly before, and it wasn't about to do it now.

Her tough luck went to shit the first week of April. All the smiles and the progress and the small looks went to shit too, tossed in the garbage forever.

Sakura messed up.

One evening, when the skies were cloudy and the streets were empty for fear of thunder and rain, Sakura fainted.

While she was in the middle of healing him, on top of it all, her chakra faded all of a sudden. It had been flickering for the longest time before, on the verge of depletion, but she had endured. That had been her second mistake. The first had been going to his apartment that evening at all, when she knew she couldn't make it.

Sasuke immediately felt something like thunder tear through his scalp, down to his brain and along his spinal cord.

It was unbearable, and if he hadn't felt such excruciating pain he would have thought he was dying. It was almost as if he could feel the connections she had been so adamant on repairing break again with a deafening crack.

Sakura collapsed a moment later, her body falling laterally from the edge of the couch to the floor at his inability to breathe, much less attempt to catch her before she fell. Her head hit the wooden coffee table before her body followed, and then she fell to the floor altogether in an unconscious heap of limbs and muscles.

Sasuke's head felt like it was going to slice open in half for what felt like one minute, and he held it in his hand like his life depended on it. But as much as the pain was great, it only really lasted ten seconds. And when it subsided, he tried to comprehend what had just happened.

He breathed in and out slowly, trying to balance his raging heartbeat and his numbed head. At last, he thought of Sakura, and of what the heck she was thinking.

Because what the heck was she thinking?

It all had happened so fast—too fast. So fast he couldn't wrap his head around it fast enough.

"Saku-" And when he turned his head around, his eyes landed upon her fallen figure before he could finish the thought.

He was lifting her up as best as he could before he could think about it—because there wasn't anything to think about when he could see his floor full of blood and the side of her face stained with the same liquid. Absentmindedly, he felt something like fear crawl up and take over his senses.

Sasuke couldn't think; he just took her and ran to the hospital.

.

Tsunade almost had a heart attack when Sasuke entered through the doors of the hospital carrying a bleeding Sakura over his shoulder.

Fortunately for him, she didn't assume it was his fault.

Sakura spent the night at the hospital; she had been completely knocked out. There was, amazingly, no concussion, and she had plainly fainted because of chakra exhaustion. A severe, almost life-threatening chakra depletion.

Sasuke didn't mention the pain he had felt on his sofa to Tsunade, but rather spent his time next to Sakura on a chair at the end of the room.

He barely slept and barely ate, and when she finally woke up as the rays of morning light filtered through the room's curtains, he was there.

He was the first thing she laid eyes on.

"Hey," she said, voice raspy and breathy, eyes glazed over and hazy.

Sasuke got up from the chair quickly, feeling his muscles scream with the exertion at being roughly shaken after a night of not moving, and of sleeping in an uncomfortable position.

He walked toward her slowly.

When he got to her side, her eyes immediately left their disoriented, cloudy state and returned to normal in a matter of milliseconds. Miraculously and in a state of panic, she sat up faster than he could blink.

"Sasuke-kun! What happened? Are you okay? Come, sit down, let me see," she rushed, and he did what she said just because he knew she could be scary when disobeyed—and because he knew she hadn't suffered anything serious, and because he really wanted her to check him so he could finally stop overthinking.

And, even on a hospital bed and with bags under her eyes and unruly hair, she looked more professional than any other doctor in the building. Sasuke felt the need to scoff, but he opted to look at her furrowed brows and the small purse to her lips instead.

"You shouldn't have pushed yourself."

"I know. It won't happen again, sorry."

Sasuke sighed, counted to three in his head, and spoke again.

"How are you feeling?" He asked, seated next to her, facing her while she familiarly put her hands on the sides of his head.

"It was only chakra depletion. You know, I'm more worried about you."

"Sakura, look-"

"Don't talk, I'm concentrating."

The clock ticked on the wall, and his body stayed rigid, tense, unmoving.

His mind took him back to sweaty foreheads and sad apologies and detached limbs, back to an image imprinted in his mind, back to the end of the war; back to Sakura and her tears and her endless supply of love and care.

Sakura, I...

Don't. I need to concentrate.

Sakura had said the same thing that day, back to the end of the war.

He took a deep breath and really worried for the first time about his condition since she fainted because, the last time she had said those words to shut him up, he had hurt her immensely, had rejected her love, had lost his arm, and had made her feel useless.

She kept her eyes closed, so she didn't really see how his eyes looked over her features with something akin to pain.

.

"Sakura-chan! Are you okay?" Her second blond best friend hugged her tightly thirty minutes later. She honestly did not want to find out how the news of her fainting had reached his ears so quickly, but then again she was very well known at the hospital. Rumours had their way into wanting ears.

"I only fainted, Naruto," she laughed, feeling that the noise coming out of her dry throat sounded a little bit too forced. If anyone in the room noticed, she couldn't tell.

"Moron."

"Who are you calling moron, bastard? Go back to the goth corner you came from!"

Sasuke crossed his arms. Naruto huffed and did the same motion, mimicking him.

And Sakura felt powerless and tired. Tired, so, so tired.

She had checked Sasuke, and she now felt incredibly tired.

"Hey, Naruto, why don't you get Sasuke some food? I bet he hasn't eaten anything yet." She was unable to tell if they heard the tremor in her voice this time either. Maybe it was for the best.

"Uh, sure, Sakura-chan," he said. "You sure you'll be okay?"

She smiled through hopeless thoughts and shiny eyes.

"Yeah."

.

Sakura wanted to cry.

She didn't mean it; she hadn't meant it. But she had been so, so exhausted, and yet she had pushed herself further than what she should—or could—have.

It had been so unprofessional from her part, she couldn't look at him in the same hospital room. He had even brought her food from the cafeteria—him, the man whom had received her uncharacteristic slip-up, had brought her food, and she couldn't even eat it out of the frustration she felt.

She should have known better. She was one of the greatest doctors in the whole Shinobi world, and one of the youngest. She didn't feel great at all at the moment. All the trophies and the medals and the titles didn't mean shit when she had risked the life of the man she loved over trying to connect severed neurons.

For what? It was useless now, and she should have realised the damage that was already done in previous sessions.

She should have known to stop, because something could have happened if she hadn't stopped—something should have happened, even if it, thankfully, hadn't.

And she hadn't stopped, and as soon as she had seen Sasuke in the same room as hers, she had checked him for any possible damage.

She hadn't done any damage, but she had realised something worse than that.

She could do nothing now but look up at the white, pristine ceiling and wonder why the world was against her. And against him. And against them.

When she had checked him, she had seen that the motor neurons she had repaired were once again ruptured, and she knew it wasn't because of her chakra depletion mistake but because of his own condition—there were many more neurons damaged than what she had managed to heal anyway. Which meant that the neurons she had tried to repair were reverting back to their old, messed up ways, as if they were rejecting her help. As if they didn't want to get help; they just wanted to destroy the man.

Sakura wanted to cry.

She knew now. She wasn't sure a few weeks ago, but she knew now, after endless sessions of trying her hardest, after six months of raw investment, after being emotionally and physically drained. Her damage the previous day had been minimal, and it certainly wasn't the cause of her current realization.

She wished, in some wicked, dark corner of her brain, that she was the one at fault. At least then she would be able to blame herself for eternity. But she wasn't the one at fault, and nobody really was, which hurt more than she could handle because these six months had been incredibly exhausting, and the realisation that her hard work was for nothing hurt like a motherfucker.

Sakura took in a shaky breath and cried, right there on the immaculate white sheets of the hospital bed, as soon as Sasuke was out of sight—probably still with Naruto at Ichiraku's or some other familiar place, unaware of it all.

The tears burnt her cheeks but she didn't find it in herself to care.

Sasuke couldn't be cured.

.


	8. Chapter 8

.

Sasuke didn't take it well, or so she supposed.

It was hard deciding what his moods were when he didn't show any signs of mood changes to the world. It was just his blank face, and his sour looks, and his tense physique all the time. Or most of the time, because she could make out some slight changes here and there, usually.

Not this time, though.

Therefore, given this knowledge, Sakura wasn't surprised when Sasuke didn't react to her announcement, out in the open in her hospital room, right after he had come back from walking a very stubborn Naruto out of the building.

She could have already left the room and gone home a long time ago. Fainting out of chakra exhaustion was no reason to go to the hospital in the first place, although she could see why Sasuke had taken her there when half her face was tainted in blood. She could have left already, but she had to tell him. She had to. She had waited for him to get back from his lunch with Naruto, and then she had given him a look, serious enough for him to know something was wrong and to lead Naruto out of the hospital.

Now, she wasn't so sure about her abrupt decision. A small part of her told her to wait for the next time she could visit him—but for what? No. She had made the right decision. The sooner he knew, the better.

The determination she felt still didn't make her less anxious. And in the face of uncertainty, she quivered.

"Did you..." She tried, sounding unsure and cautious. She tightened her fists on the hospital bedsheets, sitting on the bed and facing him. "Did you hear me?"

The room smelled of antiseptic and the lights were too bright, her mouth felt dry, and her eyes were swollen. And she waited on a baited breath.

But Sasuke didn't answer.

By now, she only felt tired. Tired of giving them both false hope, of denying the truth for longer than she really was meant to, of lying to herself. She'd really thought she could find a cure, when she knew from previous experience that there were no cures for autoimmune diseases. No matter how advanced the medic was, they couldn't ever be completely cured.

Sakura stared at his passive face, all hard ridges that were carved meticulously by perfection itself, and she immediately knew he was hurting behind the apathetic expression.

She wanted to console him, tell him words of comfort, and wrap her arms around him. Not only for him, but for herself also. Now that the truth she had feared for quite a while was out in the open; now that there was no going back.

Only that she couldn't do that when he didn't show any signs of distress, say anything, or even so little as move an inch. She found words were the only way to try to reach him right now, in case he was experiencing shock, which he probably was.

"Look, this doesn't mean anything, we can work something out. I'm not giving up," and even with her determination, her words tumbled over each other like a trainwreck, feeling her eyes burn with unspilled tears. But she had already cried enough when he was gone from the room for an hour, so she didn't let them spill for the moment.

Sasuke had yet to answer.

He sat next to her, on a chair he moved from a corner of the room to her side, staring with no apparent, outward expression at the sheets pooling at her feet.

She felt unease creep up her spine.

"Please, talk to me," she begged, voice shaking lightly in whispers. "Are you oka-"

"Fine," he spat out. He almost choked up the word, what with the venom he had spewed out with it, and it slapped her across the face like a real punch would have.

He got up, dropped the chair with the brisk movement, and walked out of the room.

And just like that, Sakura watched him leave, helpless to the action—not that she could have stopped him anyway.

She never could.

.

She gave him time.

Time was what was needed, she knew, so that's what she gave him. Time to cope, to assimilate, to think things through.

He didn't come out of his house for any circumstances, so when a week rolled by and he had yet to give anyone any signs of being alive, she decided enough time had passed by.

She had no idea if he had eaten regularly, if he had maintained a hygienic routine, if he had hurt himself, or worse. It was clear in her head when she knocked on his door, after a week of waiting, that she had to find out if he'd been doing any of those things, as his doctor and as his friend.

"Sasuke-kun?" She asked, standing right outside his apartment. She did own a spare key, but she wasn't about to burst in unannounced after a whole week. This was no infiltration. "Can I go in?"

When nothing met her trained ears, she cleared her throat and took out the key from the pocket of her casual black shorts, deeming that it was okay to use it now since she had announced her presence already. It wouldn't be an invasion of privacy—or, at least, a worrisome-enough invasion of privacy.

"I'm going to enter now, okay?"

She turned the knob and opened the door slowly, only to sigh in clear relief as she saw him sitting down on his sofa, resting in the middle and with his legs open, looking at the opposite wall with a faraway look.

She didn't know what she had expected, but this was far better than it. He looked clean and his clothes weren't dirty—just black sweatpants and a black, loose shirt—and that was enough to make her worries take a few too-many steps down the ladder of her anxiety.

"Hey, I brought you food," she announced, lifting a brown paper bag in her hand. "It's from a restaurant down the street. Sorry it's not homemade, but it was a spur of the moment thing."

Putting the bag down on his kitchen counter, she came around the corner and into the living room again, only to gasp when his empty eyes met her startled ones.

She halted in her tracks, and, for a second, she thought she heard him sigh. But then his eyes moved away, and she felt like she could breathe again.

His eyes didn't reflect anything but phantom life; she ruefully wondered if she should have waited a week to give him time at all.

"It wasn't your fault," was all he said, in a voice that proved to her that he hadn't come out of his house in days.

When the words sank into her being, she faltered taking the first step toward him from the hallway that connected the kitchen to the living room. But then she took more steps toward the man, finding it impossible to keep away when the first thing he had said was said to make her feel better.

He should be the one getting help, not her, because she wasn't the one with the life-threatening disease.

She sat down next to him slowly, mindful of rejection when she took his hand in her two, smaller ones. She moved her fingers over the rough creases and scratches as soon as he showed no signs of moving his hand away, and then she spoke.

"Your cells..." she started, but flushed out the idea when she realised it was better if she went simple on him. "Your body rejected my chakra. As I connected, they disconnected again. A week ago, I finally realised that's what's been happening when I checked for possible damage following my collapse," she swallowed the lump forming in her throat and continued, never stopping her fingers from caressing his hand. "I'm sorry if I had to faint and contrast the damaged neurons to the already healed ones to find out."

"It doesn't matter," he said.

"It does matter. I should have known sooner. I should have thought of another way."

"No, Sakura," and she stilled her movements, taking in the tired tone in his voice and recognizing it for what it was: surrender. "It wouldn't have made a difference. You said it yourself six months ago, no one has ever cured this."

"I had hope," she said, biting her lower lip at the way he tightened his hand on her own for a second when she talked again. "I still do."

"It's pointless."

Sakura watched him turn his head to where she was sitting at his side, his eyes looking over her face and finally landing on her worried eyes. He looked sick and pale and tired, and her previous analysis of him taking care of himself during the week she was absent was flushed down the drain at his appearance up close.

"You should go."

"No," she shook her head, clearly adamant on making him realise she wasn't going anywhere. Not now, not tomorrow, nor ever.

He should know. Naruto and Sakura would always be there for him; to love him unconditionally and give up everything for him, because he needed that and he didn't even realise it. Sasuke may be called a genius, but he could be detrimentally stupid sometimes.

"Go home. Go to the hospital. I don't care," he announced through barred teeth, not looking at her anymore but with his head inclined toward her, as if telling her that he was watching her every move without actually being that way, and then he seethed out, "just don't come back here."

It felt, for a split moment where she thought she was watching this from afar, from another body in the room, like he was leaving Konoha all over again. It was ironic, for he wasn't going to go away this time, but it was as if.

"Why would you even propose that?" She asked, flabbergasted, and he took the opportunity of her pained surprise to remove his hand from her hold. She barely looked down. "You know I'm not going anywhere, Sasuke-kun. Were you planning to tell Naruto the same thing?"

She was met with silence, so she prodded.

"We're still Team Seven, remember?" She asked. "Don't ever forget that. We care about you, and this is no setback because-"

"Because what, Sakura? Why are you so stubborn? You can't even see past your own delusional head that it's no use now," he spoke, and this time it was louder and more agitated, more anxious and less calm than before. It made her recoil for a second before she stood up to stand over him at the foot of the couch.

"There is no cure, I know that, but I also know that I can put you through treatment to delay the disease for as long as it can. I can try to find other ways."

With her arms across her chest and her eyes fierce and unforgiving, she had to do everything in her power to avoid her body's small jump as Sasuke stood up abrupty, making their chests bump before she could take a step back.

"You don't understand, Sakura," his voice low and menacing, but with a certain level of plead in it, reached her ears and carressed her face in an almost silent touch. "I don't want your help anymore. You did what you could, and it didn't work, but that's it."

When she was the one silent, he went on.

"I know you tried to help me, but there's nothing else you can do. So just do us a favour and get out," he took in a shaky breath, and she stood there quietly, the fire in her eyes long gone.

"Sasuke-kun..."

"Get out," he repeated. And when she didn't move, but tried to put a conforting hand on his forearm, he snapped, the anger coiling inside him finally breaking free. "Get the fuck out! Now, Sakura!"

She didn't have to hear him a third time. She ran.

.

Naruto's fist met the door in loud knocks; one time, two times, three times. Enough times for Sasuke to fling the door open with force, making the hinges tremble slightly.

They stared at each other with phantom hate—phantom hate that was somewhat very much real. And then it only took three seconds for the blond to push his best friend to one side, walk through the threshold of the apartment, and cross his arms as he inspected the surroundings.

Nothing seemed out of place. Sasuke's apartment was as pristine as always, basically, which is why Naruto couldn't understand what he had said to Sakura the previous day in order to make her so upset. He had brought her ramen at the hospital earlier on, and she had been fuming in almost tangible anger.

Naruto turned and analysed his friend up and down and side to side, and he closed the door behind him and looked at Naruto as well.

"What do you want?"

"What did you do to Sakura-chan?"

"I-" Naruto knew he had caught him off-guard, and Sasuke took a short moment to recompose his thoughts before he spoke dryly. "Nothing."

Naruto wasn't having it. "Really? Because, today, I wasn't sure if she was going to pulverise the whole hospital to the ground or cry herself to oblivion."

Sasuke decided not to comment on his friend's new, extensive vocabulary, and focused on the matter at hand. "Why would I have anything to do with that?"

"Because you're the only..."

Because you're the only one that makes her cry, and I'm not stupid enough to not notice the trails of dried up tears running down her cheeks earlier today.

Stopping himself before it was too late and the words spilled out, he swallowed and pointed an accusing finger at him instead. "Because you're an A-class bastard, that's why!"

Sasuke felt his eyebrow twitch, unbeknownst to the real statement he was meant to hear but, other than that, showed no signs of having heard him anyway. An idea popped into his head as he headed to his room. He was going to turn the conversation around; no more questions about Sakura's visit the previous day. He wanted Naruto gone. He wanted to be left alone.

"Has she told you yet?" He called out from the room. Naruto came in and flopped on his neat, done bed, wrinkling the sheets. Sasuke feigned to notice.

"Who? Tell me what?" Naruto asked, and then he put his hand on his stomach. "Do you have ramen by any chance?"

Sasuke feigned to notice his idiocity this time, too, opting to take his shirt off instead. He folded it meticulously and put it on a corner of the bed to wash it later.

"Remember when she was at the hospital a week ago?" At the blond's nod, he continued talking and ignored the lump forming in his throat when the words slipped out. "Sakura confirmed that day that I can't be cured."

The silenced reigned in the room, but Sasuke didn't dare talk again, or look at Naruto. He stripped down from his loose trousers, tossed them to the bed while folded, and entered the bathroom attached to the room. He could feel Naruto's presence in the room still, so he took off his underwear and entered the shower stall.

"Are you going to get out of my house or do you want to watch me shower?"

Despite his efforts in dispelling the blond, he was waiting for Sasuke when he came out of the bathroom. He had plenty of questions. Naruto didn't leave until midnight.

.

Sakura really wanted to let it go. She really, really wanted to walk away from all of this. She wanted to walk away and focus on her dear hospital and her seldom missions and her hang outs with friends.

She wanted to forget about anything having to do with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and she wanted to push every thought about Sasuke's wellbeing away.

She really wanted to do all those things, but she couldn't.

She couldn't turn her back on Sasuke. It was Sasuke, her Sasuke-kun, the man she had adored since she was eight, the man she had loved since she was thirteen, and the man she was in love with since somewhere in the middle of all those feelings.

And because it was Sasuke, her childhood teammate who fought alongside her and protected her and cared for her and grew to despise her and care for her again, she could not—would not—walk away from him.

He may have been an expert at walking away from her and from everything else in his life, but she couldn't do that. She wasn't like that.

She couldn't walk away.

And even though he had yelled at her the other day and very clearly stated that he wanted her gone from his apartment until his disease took his life and left him to rot, she couldn't help but feel strongly against that idea.

He wasn't her boss, but she was his. His personal doctor, anyway.

So, she was going to help him, one way or another, even if he didn't want to be helped.

Sakura just didn't know where to begin.

.

She started by consulting Tsunade, her former mentor and the person who taught her everything she knew up until now.

She had lived more years than her, she had known what Sasuke had before Sakura even had an idea, and she was sure that Tsunade could help shed some light on the situation.

She wasted no time when she got inside her office. She explained to her what had happened—briefly, for Tsunade had hold of every one of the medical reports she had written, and she was sure that Tsunade had read her reports about Sasuke over the course of six months—and then she sighed, as soon as she was done pouring out how she didn't know what to do.

"Hm," Tsunade said. It's all she said, after her former apprentice's tale, and Sakura gripped the chair's arms in controlled impatience. Fortunately, she didn't have to wait long for Tsunade to speak. "It's been six months, Sakura."

Reading between the lines like she had been taught to do her entire life, she cleared her throat before speaking.

"Yes, but his condition has been developing slowly. He has reported tingling in his shoulders in the last month, but it was only once. His hand still has perfect control, in regards to doing mundane tasks, and not simple jutsus and such," she took a breath. "He doesn't struggle that much in anything, really, but I guess I can overlook things because of his stupid, inflated Uchiha ego."

Tsunade hummed again and stood, deciding to lean on the desk of her ample office, in front of Sakura. She looked down at the pinkette woman, and then she sighed.

"What do you want, then? You know his condition has no cure, and I trust your judgement. I've only cured a handful of autoimmune disease in my lifetime, and they were not nearly as complicated as this." Arms crossed in front of her ample chest, Tsunade waited for her apprentice to answer.

"I want to help him in any way that I can. If I can't completely cure him, then, at least, I'd like to prolong the disease."

"You mean go through a daily treatment? It's going to be rough, Sakura, you must have thought about that too, I suppose."

"Of course. Such a complex disease requires consistent treatment, but I can do it," she said, leaning forward on the chair and looking up at the blonde woman. "Just help me figure out the treatment, Tsunade-sama, and I'll start it tomorrow morning."

The blonde chuckled dryly, got behind the desk again, flopped down on her chair, and took out a bottle of sake alongside a cup.

"Sure, kid. Let me get ready."

.

It seemed like fate was not on her side, and wouldn't be for the rest of the year. It seemed like, with every step she took forward, something decided to throw her back three steps at a time.

She woke up, showered, and headed to Sasuke's apartment with a list of things for the treatment that she was going to show him. She was going to get him to agree even if he didn't want to—which, of course, he wouldn't want to do.

Tsunade had helped her the previous day with said list. It consisted of things like gradual exercise, different food diets, and physical therapy, among other items.

Sakura woke up, showered, and headed to Sasuke's apartment. The morning was already sunny and vibrant, and everyone was walking here and there down the lively streets. When she got to his apartment, she knocked a few times to let him know of her arrival, and then proceded to open the door with her own key.

She had been expecting Sasuke to lash out at her immediately for not heeding his demands from three days past, or for him to ignore her completely and snap once more, or for him and Naruto to be in his living room arguing. She had expected Sasuke to still be mad at her for trying to lift up his hopes again; had expected him to tell her to leave him alone over and over until it was imprinted on her brain.

She had expected a lot of things for which she had been ready to face, but she hadn't expected an empty house.

Save for the living room fan swirling on the ceiling, there was no sign of anyone living there. The living room was quiet, neat, pristine, and Sakura couldn't help but start feeling the lump in her throat forming.

She felt her arms prickling with subtle anxiety. She wore her worries like a second skin.

She took a step forward, closed the door behind her, and took another step. And right when she about to bolt out the door and run toward the gates of the village—because, yes, she was worried to the brim about him, because he was prone to leaving the village and what if she had made him so mad he decided to leave? She wouldn't be able to forgive herself—when she heard the cry of a familiar hawk from Sasuke's room.

She rushed to his room, opening the door to find the animal perched on Sasuke's opened window.

And there he was, Sasuke, supporting his weight on the window sill, almost crawling in order to be somewhat standing and trying to write something on a piece of paper—she supposed, a message for the hawk to deliver.

Sakura felt her body grow stiff, rooted to the threshold of his dark room, looking as this overtly proud man tried to fight the urge to crawl back to the floor. The sight was one for the books, and it would have been a sight for his worst enemies, but it was breaking her heart into pieces.

Right there, in front of her wide eyed stare, he dropped the pen as his body fell—so slowly, in her mind, like an old, broken film playing constantly behind her eyelids—to the floor in a clumsy mess of unresponding limbs.

Sakura moved on instinct.

She caught him before he could touch the floor, supporting all of his dead weight with her trained arms, and lifted him up to his bed with ease. He was panting, having difficulty breathing, and his eyes were rolling to the back of his head from time to time. Breaking a sweat and almost wheezing, Sasuke closed his eyes and opened them again to focus them on her face, albeit blurry and distorted, but he could make out the colours that always defined her.

He couldn't speak, but he wouldn't have known what to say if he could speak. One moment he was getting out of bed for another uneventful day, and the next he was on the floor.

He couldn't feel any part of his body and it was taking all of his effort to breathe. He had to remind himself to inhale and exhale, as if it was a voluntary thing, and he didn't have enough energy to think about what that could possibly mean at the moment.

Sakura was saying his name and asking questions, but he couldn't make out her words despite his constant efforts.

He coughed, felt a soft sensation overtake what was left of his senses, and saw her glowing hands moving over him.

And then, nothing.

.

When Sasuke came to, the first thing he felt were small hands moving through his ebony locks, parting the hair here and there in comforting motions. He almost felt at peace, if it weren't for the fact that he had fainted a few hours before.

The next thing he noticed was the wetness on his arm and sleeve, and he ruled out the idea of blood when he knew he hadn't bled; he had only fainted. When he heard a stifled sob next to him, he instantly knew the answer.

The third thing he felt was nothing. There was no feeling, and he opened his eyes and frowned at the lack of movement and tried again, but it wasn't working. It wasn't working, and he wanted to turn his head to look at Sakura and demand what was happening, but she seemed to be oblivious to his awakened state, only crying with her forehead resting on his arm and her tears falling to the mattress.

Sasuke couldn't move his legs, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he wanted to swing over the side of his bed and stand. Realisation hit him like a bucket of cold water, and what he did feel was the cold, unrelenting torture life had given him from start to finish—something, he admitted to himself quietly as Sakura started asking him questions again, he hoped came soon.

.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work is finished. Thank you for sticking around!

.

Ino stared at her from across the table.

The establishment felt cozy; the tables, the floor, and the walls were all of a fall-themed brown, and the windows were tinted of a light yellow, making the small, familiar café that they would always frequent have a christmas feel to it instead. Still being summer, there was only one couple in the back of the place and one old, civilian man at the bar. And them.

Sakura didn't touch her coffee when the waitress brought it, and neither did Ino. They even forgot to say their customary thanks to the customary waitress that already knew their names.

Everything was suspended in space and time around the blonde, and the clock stopped ticking for the same amount of seconds that Sakura's heart stopped beating.

Ino stared at her from across the wooden table, and then she finally blinked, snapping back into reality and taking a sip of her dark, bitter coffee.

It was easier to take a sip of warm, homemade coffee and hide behind her long, blonde bangs than face her best friend's shocking admission. It wasn't even the admission itself that brought her to hide, it was the face she was sporting. As if it pained her a thousand times to the moon and back to say that she had helped the only man she had ever been in love with in every way possible, in a field she was extremely well-versed in, only for everything to come crumbling down as if she hadn't done anything at all.

Sasuke was crippled. He was already crippled before, in a way, with only one arm. But now, he only had use of one of his four main limbs. Only one out of four.

Ino felt at a loss of words, and it seemed like Sakura understood, because she got up and quickly excused herself to go to the bathroom. It was that time that Ino took to think things through.

What was someone supposed to do when they only had one arm to move? Sasuke was one of the most extraordinary ninjas in the world. Along with Naruto, he was faster and stronger and so much more powerful than any Shinobi ever. They could almost be considered Gods, for their regenerative powers and strength gave them the appearance of immortality.

But they weren't indestructible. Nobody had killed Sasuke, but Ino thought, right there on her seat with a solemn semblance that hid her fears, that the man was destroyed anyway. Destroyed by the idea, the reality, that he would never walk on water again, or walk along trees, or run from the clutches of the enemy. He would never feel that rush of adrenaline again. The only thing he could really do was throw shuriken and kunai—and what good would that do if he couldn't even dodge incoming attacks? Ino knew that he could perform jutsu with one hand, but Sakura had mentioned that his fingers were so messed up he couldn't get some seals right.

The more she thought about it, the more she felt for Sakura. That woman had only loved him unconditionally from the start, and she didn't deserve this. For starters, Ino knew he didn't deserve her love, and he never would, but Sakura didn't deserve to suffer so. It probably pained her right now, and would probably pain her more when she visited him later on in the day.

Ino wasn't about to let that happen. She was her best friend, and she was going to help.

When Sakura came back, Ino set to work.

"I had to assist a patient's surgery the other day," she started, taking her time to let Sakura assimilate every and each one of her words. "He had his whole right leg compromised," she lowered her eyes to the table's surface and moved her coffee around with a spoon. "He was diagnosed with lupus a few years ago, and you know how that goes."

Sakura didn't see where this was going, but she nodded nonetheless, knowing exactly the treatments for that. "Amputation or death." Her friend sighed, thinking back to her patient.

"I wish there were other alternatives. Most patients choose death. Death, Sakura, over having one of their limbs missing. Thankfully, my patient had his leg removed, and he's doing okay now." Ino looked up from the table to gaze up at her best friend, and she blinked her cotton blue eyes at her in sorrow. "I can't possibly begin to understand how he must be feeling."

Sakura knew she wasn't talking about her patient then, but about Sasuke. She bit her lower lip when she knew it was true.

"You only told me what happened. How did you find out?" Ino hesitated when asking, wanting to know the story behind his legs, but fearing the answers at the same time. Thankfully, Sakura spoke soon after she asked, her voice composed and calm.

"He stopped feeling his legs a week ago when I found him at his apartment barely conscious. When he fainted, I immediately scanned his body for anything that might have led to that. It was a shock sensing..." She took a deep breath, steadying herself by gripping her mug tightly, betraying her surface-deep, false sense of calmness. "How the cells in his legs were dormant—dead and unresponding. I stopped the spread, so it stopped at the knees."

Ino took a few seconds to ask anything again, mostly because she didn't want Sakura to feel bad or break down. She knew when her friend was on the edge of breaking down, and, today, she was just about there. It was evident in the way her lips pursed, her eyes blinked rapidly, and her hands gripped the mug tightly.

"How is he?"

But she still asked. She still asked because Sakura had been the one to break the news to her anyway, and she wouldn't have told Ino if she wasn't ready. After all, she had spent more than half a year dealing with the secret, and she had only told her now because the changes in Sasuke would be too noticeable to let them pass. Everyone would find out eventually.

Sakura finally looked up and locked eyes with her, and she felt chills at the emotion expressed in those jade eyes.

"Mostly unresponsive. I've been visiting everyday, but he's probably still assimilating that everything is going to change drastically from now on," she said. "He refuses the wheelchair I had one of my friends in the tech department do for him—specifically for him."

They shared an understanding look, and Ino reached for Sakura's hand above the table, where Sakura met it halfway with a light squeeze.

"How are you?" She asked in a softer tone, moving her thumb over Sakura's knuckles, careful about the question's response.

And Sakura didn't burst out in tears because her eyes still felt very swollen from every night after that fateful day, but she was still candid.

"I feel like shit, so I can't fathom how he must be feeling right now," she said. "I wish I could take it all away. I wish- I wish I could erase this whole thing and start anew. I..."

Taking a deep, calming breath, Sakura blinked at Ino, her eyes turning from sad to anguished in mere seconds.

"Ino, his birthday is in two weeks. No one should spend their twenty-first birthday like this."

Ino was once again at a loss of words, but she tried to sound convincing when she said, "He won't be alone this time. He has you."

Sakura had the strength to scoff at that.

.

They went through Sasuke's birthday in a flash. He only allowed Sakura and Naruto to be present. Sai didn't get to be there, but Sakura understood how they were not really that close anyway; they were only just starting to know each other. But not even Kakashi got to be there, the man who had helped him develop his lightning style and sealed his curse mark and taught him most of what he knew to this day—Sakura doubted the man even knew of his current predicament.

It was a very, very private gathering, and Sakura tried, throughout the whole evening, to look at Sasuke's face instead of his unresponsive legs, almost failing, and it proved to be easier when Naruto was there talking his ass off and distracting them both.

They ate his favourite meals at his apartment. Naruto had tried to carry him to the dining table, but Sasuke had threatened to pluck his eyes out for even thinking about it. He also refused the wheelchair again, so they had all eaten in his room.

.

It was the month of August, and Sakura tried again, as every other day, to get him on the damn wheelchair. But with a different approach to the situation this time, since pleading clearly didn't seem to work with him.

So, right when she finished checking over his system for any abnormalities, she stood from the bed and looked him down, like he was a little kid in need for persuasion.

"Are you going to use the wheelchair today?"

Sasuke gave her a look, and he tensed his jaw before simply uttering, "No."

Sakura would have left it there on any other day—she would have sighed and nodded and gone off with her day—but she wasn't going to now.

"You're doing nothing here, Sasuke-kun. You're disintegrating, passing the time on your bed. Your bones are not getting enough vitamins, your skin is paler than ever, and your muscles will soon enough lose their strength. Do you really want to throw all the years of training away?"

"It's not like I have a choice."

"Yes, you do, you have a wheelchair. There's nothing wrong with using one, Sasuke-kun. I even got you the first electric wheelchair designed by Konoha because of your arms," she sighed, dropping herself at the foot of his bed, sitting down and looking up at the ceiling. When he said nothing, she closed her eyes. "You can't stay there forever."

He turned his head toward his window and muttered, "Watch me," with no interest whatsoever, as if lost in his own world of dark, jumbled thoughts.

She got up slowly, taking steps toward the end of his room and moving the wheelchair right next to his bed, right next to him. He wasn't even sparing her a glance because he was so, so terribly convinced that she wouldn't lay a hand on him in a million years. But she was done with his stubbornness; denial only ran for so long. If he thought she wasn't going to force him, he was wrong.

She gathered strength in her arms and slipped one arm under his knees and the other under his back, and lifted him with ease. A terrified look crossed over his features before he started pushing against her with all his might, being unable to do anything else, not being able to do much due to his low levels of strength—which was perfectly understandable for someone who hadn't got any sunlight, exercise, or enough food for the past weeks. She wanted him to improve, to get better, to thrive again.

"Sakura, let me down."

His voice reached her ears like velvet to the touch, but his tone was menacing, dangerous, threatening like on the verge of lashing out.

She heard him perfectly clear, and so she looked at him with a little smile that screamed of revenge out of the corner of her eye, not really paying attention to him but to the wheelchair she was approaching. "Make me."

And right after she spoke, she placed him gently on the chair, positioned his numb feet on each of the footplates, and stepped back, truly looking at him for the first time since she picked him from the bed. She was about to clasp her hands together and smile at him, tell him that it wasn't that hard to do that, tell him that the wheelchair was made for these things, but her blood ran cold before she could do any of those things.

The sight of a tear rolling down his cheek quickly made her halt any possible movements.

Sasuke was crying. Sasuke was crying and she made him cry and he never cried in front of anyone but now he was crying and-

She immediately approached him and bent down to pick him up again, and she put him on the middle of his bed gently, so gently that she didn't feel him move at all. Now the tears were falling from the sides of his eyes onto the bedsheets, rolling with gravity, and in his eyes shone an emptyness she was familiar with, but didn't want to see ever again.

"I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, please, forgive me, Sasuke-kun," she apologised quickly, rushing through the words and stumbling over them. "I didn't realise you weren't ready because it's almost been a month and I don't even know how you manage to go to the bathroom at all and I'm pretty sure you haven't showered in a long time so I just wanted to help-"

He interrupted her and said, "You've done so much to help me as is, Sakura," with a hint of pain, torment, in his voice, raspy and real. His tears didn't ellicit any sound from him, and his shoulders didn't shake, but it was still so painstakingly, goddamned real. Sakura wanted it to be all a bad dream.

He looked up to the ceiling and took in a shaky breath, closing his eyes when the words fell from his mouth, sounding more like a statement than a question. "Don't you ever get tired?"

Instead of feeling insulted and hurt, she smiled through the constricting pain in her chest. Her gut was closing in, but she swallowed hard one time and spoke.

"Of course I feel tired. I am tired, but I'll never stop."

Never stop caring; never stop trying to help; never stop loving.

And then he opened his charcoal eyes and looked at her, and he did something that had her searching desperately for air—because there was none, there was not enough, and she felt like she was suffocating.

He lifted his right arm, and with the faintest of touches, traced her cheekbone with the knuckles at the back of his hand—with the part that wasn't crooked and ugly, something Sasuke would say from time to time.

Sakura stayed glued to her spot on the bed next to him, and his pained eyes never left her own startled ones.

And then he dropped the hand as quickly as he had lifted it, and looked back at the window, away from her form.

He stayed quiet from then on, so Sakura took the cue to leave.

The next day, she didn't have to use the key to enter his apartment. He opened up with his own hand right before she got there, and when she entered all she saw was a retreating Sasuke in a wheelchair, the electric sound of the controller fading as he entered his kitchen with ease. Sakura felt her heart skip a beat, and then she got inside.

.

August was ending when Naruto came bursting in Sasuke's apartment, a panting Sakura behind him, clutching at her knees. "Naruto, why did you make me sprint all the way here? You know I just got from a mission!"

"I'm sorry Sakura-chan! But we have to do this!"

"Do what?" Sasuke prompted from the living room, a quirked eyebrow present. Naruto had opened the door with the copy he had, and Sasuke had been trying to get something to eat before they came bursting in—not that he was going to tell them he couldn't reach his top drawer to get a stupid box of cereal.

They each stopped their bickering as soon as they heard his voice, and Sasuke locked eyes with Sakura for a few seconds longer than any friend should. But a part of him was glad she'd finished her week-long mission unscathed, even if she only had had to retrieve some herbs and make a deal with a neighbouring village. He knew she was capable of protecting herself, but now he would never be able to protect her anymore.

His gaze hardened. He turned around and moved to the kitchen before they could speak again.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Naruto followed and invited himself inside, dropping himself on top of a space on the kitchen counter.

Sakura closed the door and entered the kitchen as well, and looked at the opened cabinet all the way to the top of his wall. She got the only cereal box that was protruding from the shelf, knowing exactly what had been happening before they got there. "Have you eaten? I'll make you breakfast."

Sasuke nodded when she turned her head back to look at him. Her high ponytail swayed when she turned back around to prepare his bowl of cereal and milk, and he noticed she was letting her hair grow.

Naruto exclaimed he wanted cereal as well, interrupting Sasuke's observations, and then a pan was thrown his way.

"Wha- What was that for?"

"Make your own damn cereal, idiot! You have two hands."

"No fair, Sakura-chan! You're already making Sasuke's, so make mine."

"You dragged me in here and I couldn't even get to shower, so now you make your own food."

Sasuke sighed as the conversation went on and on, back and forth like an infantile chat from grown adults.

When there were three bowls on the table after much confrontation, they all started eating, and Naruto broke the peace in between bites.

"So, Sasuke, we're gonna take you outside, 'kay?"

Sasuke almost spat his mouthful of cereal on his face.

"What?" He managed to croak out. Sakura, on his left, looked as dumstruck as him.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"We're just gonna take him out, Sak. He could use some sun and some air. I think he needs it."

"I'm not a dog," Sasuke muttered under his breath, seething at the blonde for wanting to take him out, as if he owned him.

It was Sakura who made him want to spit out his food, then.

"I think Naruto's right, Sasuke-kun. And we know that's not a common occurence." Naruto smiled brilliantly before he realised what that last statement meant, and he protested loudly, but Sasuke was only paying attention to her voice. "You need to get outside sometime, and it's so early that no one really is out anyway." She glanced at Naruto. "Let's go to the training grounds. Is that what you were thinking, too?"

Naruto swallowed his mouthful and looked back at her. "Mm? Oh! Well, I didn't think much past taking him out."

"I'm not a dog, loser," the dark-haired man reiterated, throwing the closest object to him at his face: a balled-up napkin. The damange was very low, but the price of watching the blond seethe was very high.

"Geez, I'm not into that kind of fetish, Sasuke!"

"So you're into a kind of fetish?"

"S-Shut up!"

Sakura massaged her temples slowly, only thinking that they were going to help Sasuke get outside and have some air seep into his lungs, apart from the air he already got from his windows everyday.

They got to the training grounds with no trouble—only that they took much, much longer than usual because the wheelchair wasn't as fast as they wanted it to be, but they were sure Sasuke knew that more than anyone, so they didn't comment on it.

Sakura lied down on the recently cut grass. It didn't matter if she got dirtier when she was dirty to begin with. Naruto sat next to her and looked up at the sky.

And Sasuke sat a few steps ahead, right hand gripping the metal hand rest of the chair, eyes taking everything in. His senses were overwhelmed by the different stimuli, and he suddenly thought that he had missed this so much. He had forgotten how it felt to be outside, right in the open, with no care in the world.

"Help me get on the grass," he said, softly, more to himself than to any of them. But they still heard him, and Naruto still picked him up and put him down in between them.

Sasuke looked at their content faces before laying down. The branches and leaves on top of them shielded them from the potent sun, but some rays of light still managed to filter through and touch his skin in a soft embrace. Sasuke welcomed it. He welcomed the sun, the breeze, and the soft talking between his teammates.

He welcomed the way Sakura, on his right side, intertwined their hands on the ground, and how Naruto, on his left side, clutched at his shirt at his hip. They would always be Team Seven. Sasuke knew, so he closed his eyes and drifted into the late hours of noon with them.

.

Sakura was checking over him with her healing chakra while sitting in front of him. His legs were spread out in front of him; he was sitting down on the sofa sideways, his back resting on the armrest. Sakura was sitting on a little space he left for her in between his side and the sofa's backrest, almost right in front of his immaculate face.

She knew there had been no changes since the last week she checked his condition, and that could be due to the change in diet, the light exercises she was making him do, and the weekly meetings with Naruto at the training grounds, but she didn't let go of her chakra just yet—so she could look at him a little longer from up close, if she was honest with herself.

He had come back a year ago, had fought with Naruto for not being able to attend the blond's wedding, and she had suspected something was wrong from then on, from his inability to get up at the blond's punch.

From then on, things had moved pretty quickly. When she wasn't busy at the hospital, she was busy trying to control his condition. There was no point in reversing anything now because it just wasn't going to work. Her only goal now was to contain the disease so it wouldn't get worse—no one needed any more of that, she thought.

Things had been hectic during the past year, both in his life and hers.

She hadn't had any sort of time to really look at him, admire him, love him. All she had done was take care of him and make sure he didn't drop dead one day in front of her unsuspecting eyes.

So, now, she really took her time to look at him. His long eyelashes, the straight nose, the thin but tempting lips, the long bangs framing his face. She made sure to take every feature of him whole.

His eyes were closed as she worked on him like any other day, and she wondered, for a finite moment, if after all this time and all this pain she could finally take a step forward, because she felt all her steps had been backwards in the past year. All her steps forward had backfired. She wondered if she could focus on them now. She wondered if there was still a them now—surely his feelings hadn't changed that much about her, right?

She wondered if she could close the gap between them, and if he would let her. And then she wondered the question that set off the answers to all the pondering: what would she have to lose? It would certainly not hurt them. Sakura knew a little about rejection, and Sasuke would just dismiss the incident as if nothing. She would still visit him everyday, and he would still open the door for her every time.

So she moved forward slowly, the space between their bodies closing in. She closed her eyes before she could think any deeper into this, and pressed her lips against his softly, hesitantly. Her chakra faded gradually, and the hands that were hovering on the side of his head were now touching the skin there, moving across his cheeks gently.

There was no noticeable, outward reaction from Sasuke—she would have believed that if she was anybody else, but the side of her body was touching his, so she felt him tense up, and her lips were touching his, so she felt his breath hitch just as much.

She moved away shortly after moving in, only because he hadn't shown any signs of reciprocation. She opened her eyes, half-lidded with held-back desire, but open enough to show disappointment.

There was a pensive, conflicting look on his face for a second too long when she was about to apologise, but then he was the one closing the short gap between them, tasting her better now that they were both responding. She moved her lips against his with fervor but with a gentleness that he took. He took and took from her, like it was second nature, like he had been waiting to kiss her for years, and she gladly welcomed the thought. His hand touched her back and moved to her waist. Her hands moved from his cheeks to his hair and chest.

And then they were parting, breathing heavily as if they had battled for hours. Sakura had the urge to smile, giggle, and throw her hands around him all at the same time. She couldn't entertain the thought for much longer, for she opened her eyes from the still-short distance between them and looked at him.

He looked like he was in pain, his features contorting slowly to something that let her know he was hurt, so she woke up from the cloudy haze she had let herself fall into and readied herself to let her hands glow again.

"What's wrong? Where does it hurt?"

The questions seemed to make him snort dryly, without any trace of humour, and he shook his head slowly while looking away from her, brow furrowed and lips pursed.

"I didn't think you'd still..."

After knowing him for so long, she knew exactly what he meant to say. He didn't have to spell it out for her.

He thought she didn't love him, that she had moved on for some reason, that she didn't still want to spend her life with him. Her slight blush leftover from their first kiss left her face and was replaced by a frown that matched his own.

"Of course I do. What made you doubt it?" He didn't have to say it to her this time either for her to comprehend. It was only a flicker of his eyes toward his useless legs, and she hardened her eyes immediately in understanding. "Why would that change me? You know me better than that."

It looked like someone had slapped him across the face, for he widened his eyes and turned his head away, hiding his face in a veil of unruly bangs. "I don't want you... to live with this for the rest of your life."

That ellicited something else from what had been expecting. She smiled, then, unaware of the level of seriousness in his tone, as though he was kidding around. "Is this your way of proposing? Because it's horrible, try again." She started to chuckle but he looked so serious that she eventually had to stop.

It was like time stood still before he finally talked.

"You deserve something more, Sakura. I used to wonder if I was good enough for you, because of all the terrible things I've done—that's one of the reasons why I went on my redemption journey. But now," he roamed his eyes over his legs and willed them, for a second, to move, but it was to no avail. "Now I definitely know the answer to that."

"You don't get to decide that. That's my decision to make, Sasuke-kun, not yours," she said, noticing how he shifted slightly, trying to get away. She wasn't about to let him, so she turned his head with two hands on each cheek, to look at her again. If he didn't want to, she didn't care. He had to look at her when she told him.

"I'm in love with you," she felt his breath catch in his throat. "Before the war, I had moments when I thought I didn't harbour those feelings anymore, but I was fooling myself. I think I've never stopped, and I don't think I ever will. So if you want me," she looked away from him, her eyes watering against her wishes. If he rejected her now, it would hurt her more than if he rejected her after a kiss, that's for sure. "You have me. You'll always have me."

His silence prodded her to look at him once more, and she spoke again out of pure nervousness.

"You're still the man I love, no matter how many changes you go through," she smiled softly, caressing his cheeks with her thumbs. "Got it?"

"I can't protect you," he spat the words out as if he hated the sound of them leaving his mouth. She sighed, glad that this is what was troubling his mind, and not the idea that he might not want this for them anymore.

She moved the bangs from his face, moving her fingers through his hair, looking right at him as she smiled.

"I'm a tough girl, Sasuke-kun. I can protect myself."

He wasn't responding, but he was looking at her as if for the first time.

And then, after one simple nod, she felt him give in. She felt him surrender and break down his evasive walls. She felt him grab the hair at the back of her neck to guide her forward. Forward and forward, until he kissed her again.

Sakura thought that meant they had a chance.

.


End file.
